A rare grisaille armorial punch bowl, Qing dynasty, Yongzheng, 1730's.

The Swedish East India Company was founded 1731, one of the new commodities that the company brought back a part from large quantities of tea and porcelain was punch. It soon became a popular drink amongst men, and large quantities of punch bowls were commissioned to meet the demands, few have survived to these days.

It had long been a popular fashion to mount commemorative medals and coins on silver tankards and other drinking vessels. So the step to use coins and bank notes as decoration on porcelain was not far when the possibilities to have items custom made in China.

During the late 1730’s the interest in the diseased Swedish King Carolus XII politics and wars escalated. The coin used to decorate this bowl are of the kind minted to restore the situation after the s.k. ‘Not geld’ (emergency money) and this one hold the value 2 daler silver.

In Sweden, during the years 1715-1719, to finance the Great Northern War, Carolus XII and the Government decided to collect all silver coins and replace them with ones made in copper. 42 million coins with the nominal value of 1 daler silver were thence manufactured in copper. The government promised to exchange them into the correct value in the future, but only a small value of this was ever paid, which lead to an uproar. The value that the depicted coins hold, 2 daler silver. And they were minted as an effort to restore the situation.

There are some punch bowls with not-geld or other Carolus XII memorabilia previously known and documented in the literature, see for example

Sven T Kjellberg, in Svenska Ostindiska Kompanierna page 246.
Also M Lagerquist “Karl XII i Kina, Fataburen page 155-166.
Both these type of punch bowls have been up for auction at Bukowskis.

J. Nordbergs "Konung Carl XII:s historia". Compare silver tankards decorated with Carolus XII’s s.k. Not Geld.