CIRCA 1765, BLUE CROSSED SWORDS AND DOT MARK TO INTERIOR

This butter-tub was part of a large blue and white chinoiserie service based on drawings attributed to Johann Gregorius Höroldt and his immediate circle of painters. A total of seventy pieces are known to exist with the vast majority of the service is split between two private collections. It is not known for whom this service was intended, but the availability of this pattern would have been limited, so it is thought that this would have been a special commission. For a discussion of this service see Nicholas Zumbulyadis, Bernhard von Barsewisch and Hermann Reiff, Chinese Fantasies: A Most Unsual Chinoiserie Meissen Dinner Service in Underglaze-Blue, The Journal of American Ceramic Circle, Vol. XV (2009), pp. 47-61. For a similar butter-tub see Rainer Rückert, Meissener Porzellan (Munich 1966), p. 134, no. 527.