THE SCHWERIN SERVICE

Details
THE SCHWERIN SERVICE
Circa 1754 and 1760

The extensive composite Meissen and Berlin pink-scale dinner-service painted with a central bouquet of flowers within moulded gilt kidney-shaped panels with swags of flowers pendant from a shaped pink-scale border edged with pink and yellow C-scrolls, divided by radiating panels of gilt feuilles-de-choux and flower-sprays within shaped gilt-line rims, comprising:

A centrepiece modelled as a gallant and companion seated and standing beside a palm-tree supporting the quatrefoil bowl, with a dog and sheep at their feet on a green-mound base (slight chip to his jacket, minor chipping to foliage)
A quatrefoil two-handled tray
A shaped oval two-handled tureen, cover and stand with scroll and foliage handles, paw feet and pink rose finial (slight chips to feet)
A pair of smaller shaped oval tureens and covers en suite (slight chips to feet)
Four large circular dishes, 13 3/4in. (35cm.) diam.
Seven large circular dishes (one with restoration to rim), 12 3/4in. (33.5cm.) diam.
Five deep circular dishes, 9 1/4in. (23.5cm.) diam.
Eighty plates (two with rim restoration, two with slight rim chips, raised gilding rubbed, some scratching to glaze and enamels)
- blue crossed swords marks and Pressnummern 61 to the plates, 67 to large circular dishes and 22 to the deep circular dishes, H to the tray and tureen-stand
Three circular Berlin soup-tureens and covers (two tureens cracked and restored)
A circular dish, 12 3/4in. (33.5cm.) diam.
Twenty-six soup-plates
One dinner-plate
- blue sceptre marks, various Pressnummern and incised marks
Provenance
Almost certainly given by Frederick the Great to his commander, Generalfeldmarschall Kurt Christoph von Schwerin, probably at the time of his second marriage in 1754
Exhibited
Formerly on loan to the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin

Lot Essay

Schwerin was born in Pomerania in 1684, and entered the Prussian army in the 1720's. Promoted to Feldmarschall in 1740, he was later raised to the rank of Graf. Although his relationship with Frederick the Great was never tranquil, he acted as principal adviser to the King for the duration of the First Silesian War, also playing a significant part in the Second Silesian War and the preparation of the campaign plan for the Seven Years War.

His first wife died in 1754. He remarried almost immediately, his second wife being his mistress, Philippine Louise von Wackenitz, Abbess of Barth; the couple already had a child. He died in battle in 1756.

The design for the plates in this service appears in the published list of 1790 in the Meissen archives as No. 82. Gunter Reinheckel, in his seminal article Plastiche Decorationsformen im Meissner Porzellan des 18.Jahrhunderts, Keramos, 1968, pp. 103 et seq., discusses the precise place of this pattern in the development of Meissen wares. The shape, which is very close to one used at Vincennes by this date, may well have a French origin, and is certainly not directly attributable to any Meissen modeller

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