A RARE GRISAILLE AND FAMILLE ROSE DANBY GATE PLATE

CIRCA 1767

Details

A RARE GRISAILLE AND FAMILLE ROSE DANBY GATE PLATE
Circa 1767
Showing the Oxford Physick Garden's main gate, named for Henry Danvers (1573-1644), Earl of Danby and founder of the Garden, including his bust at the top and statues of Charles I and II in the side niches, as well as the arms of Danvers, of Oxford, of St. George and the Royal Stuart arms, and showing the figure of Jacob Bobart, first Keeper of the Garden, in the foreground walking with his goat
9in. (22.8cm.) diam.

Lot Essay

The Oxford Physick Garden, founded in 1621, was the first of its kind in England, at a time when botany was a medicinal, not an ornamental, practice. The gate, possibly designed by Inigo Jones, was finished in 1632. B.D.H. Miller (Oxford in Chinese Export Ware, Oriental Art, summer 1966) speculates that this porcelain may have been ordered by John Bradby Blake, a young botanist who travelled to Canton in 1767. Other examples are in the Rijksmuseum (Miller, op. cit.) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Le Corbeiller, op. cit., p. 105), and one from the Mottahedeh Collection was sold Sotheby's New York, 30 January 1985, lot 159 (Howard & Ayers, op. cit., p. 263)

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