Bonhams 1793 : A Meissen plate decorated with the 'Parrot and Spaniel' pattern, circa 1740

Decorated with a spaniel barking at a chained parrot seated on a higher stand, the parrot surrounded by small insects, all under a densely decorated scrollwork border in brown and gold, alternated by four shell-scrolls, 23cm diam., crossed swords in underglaze-blue, impressed Dreher's mark of three dots (minor wear)

Sold for £2,500 inc. premium

Footnotes

The pattern on this plate is generally thought to be based on the designs of Petrus Schenk, the first Dutchman sent to Japan to design patterns to be copied and sent back to Amsterdam via the VOC. There is a Chinese cup and saucer in the Victoria and Albert Museum with a blue and white decoration of the same pattern, datable to about 1750. A Meissen charger with the same pattern can be found in the Pauls-Eisenbeiss Collection on view in the Kirschgarten Museum in Basel, and is illustrated in the catalogue of the collection (1972, Vol I, p. 498f.), where it is mentioned that the larger part of this service (52 pieces in total) was in the Ole Olsen Collection. Rückert (1966, cat.no.147) notes that Zimmermann (1926, p.247) dated the service to 1760, and that on the basis of the shape of the handle on one of the two jugs in the Dresden porcelain collections the date must be after 1735. Schnorr von Carolsfeld, in his catalogue of the Klemperer Collection (1928, p.101) dated the service earlier, to circa 1735-40. The mark, according to Rückert, points to a date around the middle of the 18th century.

Category: Decorative Arts / European Ceramics

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