CIRCA 1740, BLUE CROSSED SWORDS MARKS AND PRESSNUMMER 16

Plates with this distinctive chinoiserie decoration have traditionally been associated with the Villiers family, the Earls of Jersey. In 1948, the renowned collector, Ralph H. Wark, bought a quantity of Meissen wares including dishes, plates and tankards, which were decorated in this style and said to have been owned by the Earl of Jersey. This is possible as 21 plates of this type remain at Osterley Park near London. Furthermore, the plates at Osterley Park could be those mentioned by Sarah Sophie, Countess of Jersey, who in 1860 made an inventory of her London residence in Berkeley Square in which she recorded: 'Old China- 33 Dresden plates Chinese figures', see Abraham L. den Blaauwen, Meissen Porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2000, p. 279, cat. no. 202. The pieces purchased by Wark are now in the Cummer Museum of Art, Jacksonville, Florida and are illustrated by Ulrich Pietsch in Early Meissen Porcelain, The Wark Collection from The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, London, 2011, pp. 214-226, cat. nos. 200-213.

Wark argued that the decoration of this service was by Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck. However, several extant pieces with this decoration bear impressed numerals (including one plate in the present lot), which were introduced after Löwenfinck had left the factory in October 1736. This would suggest that Löwenfinck was not the only artist to paint in this distinctive style and that Meissen may have produced more than one service of this type.

Many of the scenes on pieces with this decoration are based on prints by Petrus Schenk Junior from his series Nieuwe geinventeerde Sineesen and others published by Johann Christoph Weigel, however the sources for the scenes on the present examples have not been identified.

Two dishes and a plate of Earl of Jersey Service type, from the Oppenheimer Collection, were sold by Sotheby's, New York, on 14 September 2021, lots 42, 43 and 45.