Footnotes

Provenance:
Anon. sale, Christie's Rome, 24 April 1991, lot 170

Literature:
Hoffmeister 1999, I, no. 189

Exhibited:
Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, 1999-2009

In the final months of the Seven Years War, before the Peace of Hubertusburg on 15th February 1763, Frederick the Great ordered the last and best-documented of his six large table services from the Meissen manufactory. The Prussian king gave very detailed instructions for the design of this service, in written instructions to Johann Joachim Kaendler on 11th November 1762, and subsequently in person, with the aid of drawings by his own hand. Kaendler left a detailed record of the king's instructions to him, from which we know, in addition to the title of the service, that the shape was based upon a French silver plate, that it should appear both 'etwas antique' (somewhat antique) as well as 'muschlicht (shell-like), that it should have a yellow 'mosaique border, and that it should be painted with 'Indianische Thiere und Vögel' ('Indian' or exotic animals and birds) [quoted by Beaucamp-Markowsky 1981, pp. 18-19].

Samuel Wittwer has demonstrated how Frederick's unusual design was in keeping with the spirit of the Chinese House in Potsdam for which it was intended: making light of the European fashion for Chinoiserie (Wittwer 2009, pp. 39-43). Of all the services that Frederick commissioned or acquired at Meissen, the 'Japanese Service' is perhaps the one that reflects the Prussian king's sophisticated taste most closely. It is also serves as a reminder of the way European chinoiserie taste evolved over the course of the 18th century. In addition to the pieces mentioned in the literature (see above, and Wittwer 2009), three plates and a dessert plate were in the von Dallwitz Collection, Berlin (destroyed in 1945). Another plate was sold at Christie's London, 10 July 2007, lot 128.