AN OKEOVER PLATE

CIRCA 1743

Details

AN OKEOVER PLATE
Circa 1743
With a large coat-of-arms of Okeover quarterly impaling Nichol in the center set against elaborate scrolling mantling and pennants and flanked by white horses rising from blue-green water, the rim enamelled with the gilt cypher monogram MLO twice and the dragon and coronet Okeover crest twice, each within shaded gilt scrollwork cartouches flanked by sea creatures and rising from water, all on a field of colorful flowers, the rim edged in a sepia and gilt dot and bar pattern
9in. (22.9cm.) diam.

Lot Essay

From the famous service made for Leake Okeover (1702-65) and Mary Nichol Okeover for which the original invoices survives, sent to "Leake Okeover Esqre." from Joseph Congreve, commander of the East Indiaman Prislowe, one dated 1743 and reading "...from ye Jerusalem Coffee House, Change Alley, a consignment of fifty plates and four large dishes with your arms". The original drawing also survives, reading "...a pattern for china plate. Pattern to be returned." Leake and Mary Okeover died without children but their estates at Okeover passed to a cousin and are still in the family, a total of 800 years. See D.S. Howard, Chinese Armorial Porcelain, p. 398. See also Howard & Ayers, op. cit., p. 413, where the authors call the Okeover service "one of the finest ever made" and reproduce the drawing and one of the invoices

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