18TH CENTURY

Details

A pair of blue and white 'herring' dishes
18th Century
Of rectangular shape with notched corners, the centre painted with two herring placed in opposite direction, beneath a row of demi- peony-heads interlaced with scrollwork suspending from a cell-pattern band around the everted rim, one with underside rim chip
24 cm. wide (2)

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Lot Essay

Dr. Christian J.A. Jörg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade, The Hague, 1982, p. 179, notes that according to the Dutch East India Company's 'Requirements' of 1773, there existed a narrow type for a single herring and a wider version for two, and that dishes were painted with either one or two herrings for their respective requirements. A dish similar to the present example is illustrated by Jörg, idem, fig. 89; another with two herring rather than the more common one fish, is in the Gemeente Museum, Den Haag, illustrated by Dr. T. Volker, De Chinese Porselein Kast, 1954, cat. no. 238. For a single dish and a Delft prototype, cf. Howard and Ayers, China for the West, vol,I, p. 85, no. 42.

The two-herring type dish inspired a transfer-printed Spode earthenware dish, R. Copeland, Spode's willow pattern and other designs after the Chinese, p.44, pl.26.

A similar double-herring dish was sold in our Amsterdam Rooms, The Dutch Interior, 29 September 1999, lot 731.

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