Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
This auction has ended. View lot details
You may also be interested in
Lot 177
An exceptionally rare Chelsea blue and white plate, circa 1755
27 November 2024, 10:30 GMT
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £1,536 inc. premium
Looking for a similar item?
Our British Ceramics specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialistAsk about this lot
Fergus Gambon
Director
An exceptionally rare Chelsea blue and white plate, circa 1755
With a petal-lobed rim, painted in underglaze blue with two long-tailed birds perched on an outcrop, vegetation issuing from a rocky landscape, the rim with five vignettes of rocks and flowers, 23cm wide, anchor mark in blue
Footnotes
Provenance
Elizabeth Adams Collection
Exhibited by Stockspring Antiques, The Dragon and the Quail, 2000, no.70.
Unlike Bow, Chelsea largely steered away from emulating oriental blue and white porcelain in favour of the enamelled wares in kakiemon, famille rose and continental styles. As a result, underglaze blue Chelsea is exceedingly rare.
A bowl and a saucer, both of octagonal form are illustrated and discussed by John C Austin, Chelsea at Williamsburg (1977), p.66-67, figs.48 and 49. A small number of plates of the same shape as the present lot are known. The lobed rims follow the 'ten square' profile used to describe certain items advertised in the 1755 Chelsea sale catalogue. All known examples of these plates are painted with the same central scene featuring two long-tailed birds. Two examples are in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. nos.414:349-1885 and 3863-1853). Another in the British Museum is illustrated by Ayers, Impey and Mallet, Porcelain for Palaces (1990), p.288 and an example in the Mary and Peter White Collection is illustrated in Eating at the Whites' House (2022), p.245. All of these have a diaper and flower panel border, more in the Chinese taste than Japanese and Mary White discusses this combination of influences in her paper, 'A Chelsea Blue and White Plate and its Origins', ECC Trans, Vol.24 (2013), pp.55-61. The present lot would appear to be a rarer version of this design, the border instead being made up of five vignettes of flowers issuing from rocks, more conducive with the decoration at the centre of the plate.