Footnotes

Provenance:
Gift from Augustus III, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, to Sir Charles Hanbury Williams in 1748;
Dr. Siegfried Ducret Collection, Zürich;
Private Collection, Germany, sold Sotheby's London, 19 November 1996, lot 127;
Acquired in the above sale

Literature:
Clarke 1975, p. 9, pl. 182;
Hoffmeister 1999, I, no. 192;
Chilton 2007, pp. 282-283

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

This celebrated gift from Augustus III to the British envoy to the Saxon court between 1747-49, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, has been discussed in detail by T.H. Clarke and Meredith Chilton (see Literature). Hanbury Williams apparently made a good impression in Dresden, noting in June 1747 in a letter to Henry Fox, ''Tis impossible to tell you how well I am with the king' (quoted by Chilton 2007, p. 280). Hanbury Williams' confidence appears to be confirmed by the gift of this service early in 1748, though it was not delivered until the end of 1750 or the beginning of 1751. The reason for this magnificent and unusual gift so early in Hanbury Williams' tenure - it was customary that gifts were received at the end of a diplomatic mission - is not certain, though it may have been made to ensure Hanbury Williams' help in an unsuccessful attempt to secure a loan of £500,000 for Saxony from the British government (Chilton 2007, p. 289). Hanbury Williams was subsequently sent to Hannover, Warsaw and Berlin, where he incurred the dislike of Frederick the Great. He remained envoy to Dresden and Warsaw until 1755, when he was appointed ambassador to Russia.

The service was shipped in January 1751 to Hanbury Williams' friend, Henry Fox, in Holland House, London. With the exception of a handful of pieces, most of the surviving pieces from the service are in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle. It is uncertain when it entered the family's possession, though it may have been as early as 1756, when the Earl of Northumberland - later 1st Duke - apparently subscribed to a raffle of 'Dresden porcelaine' (Chilton 2007, p. 282). Apart from the two plates in the Hoffmeister Collection (Hoffmeister 1999, I, nos. 191-192), only two other plates are known outside of Alnwick Castle: one in the Seattle Art Museum and the other sold by Sotheby's London, 15 April 1997, lot 112.

According to T.H. Clarke (loc. cit.), the flower decoration on this service is based for the most part on J.W. Weinmann's Phytanthoza-iconographia, of 1738-40, and some of the insects can be traced to engravings by Jacob Hoefnagel (1575-1630), after drawings by his father Georg (1542-1600), published in Frankfurt in 1592. The printed sources for the animals are varied, dating between the early 16th century and 1745. Many are derived from a set of ninety engravings by Johann Elias Ridinger, Entwurf einiger Thiere, published between 1738-40, though Clarke suggests that the sheep on the present lot may be after a 17th century Dutch print.