CIRCA 1740, BLUE CROSSED SWORDS MARK, PRESSNUMMER 22 AND DREHER'S 3 TO FOOTRIM

Engravings by the Augsburg engraver Melchior Küssel, published in two series in 1681 and 1682 by Johann Wilhelm Baur, were used as the principal graphic sources for this service.

Samuel Christie-Miller reputedly bought the service in Paris from a member of the House of Orléans in about 1840, but the early provenance of this service still remains obscure, and it is not known for whom the service was originally made. Ulrich Pietsch suggests that from the sheer quality of the decoration, executed by the leading artists at Meissen, Christian Friedrich Herold, George Heintze and Bonaventura Gottlieb Häuer, indicates that it may have been a gift from Augustus III to the French Court. This is extremely probable, given that his daughter Josepha married the Dauphin in 1747.

Until the appearance of seventy-two pieces from the Estate of the late S.R. Christie-Miller at Sotheby's London in 1970, only one piece of the service, in the Victoria and Albert Museum (museum no. 1976-1855), was known and had been published. For the example in the Carabelli Collection, Switzerland, see Ulrich Pietsch, Frühes Meissner Porzellan, Sammlung Carabelli Catalogue, Munich, 2000, pp. 242-243, no. 118, and p. 244, where he mentions an example in the Pauls Collection, Switzerland which has a G.H. monogram on the saddlebag of a horse, which he attributes to George Heintze. The examples in Hamburg, formerly in the Hoffmeister collection, Hamburg, were sold by Bonhams, London, on 24 November 2010, lots 52 and 53; see Dieter Hoffmeister, Meissener Porzellan des 18. Jahrhunderts, Katalog der Sammlung Hoffmeister, Hamburg, 1999, Vol. I, nos. 96-101.