A FREDERICK THE GREAT HOT WATER PLATE

CIRCA 1750-56

Details

A FREDERICK THE GREAT HOT WATER PLATE
Circa 1750-56
Enamelled with a large and complex coat-of-arms for Hohenzollern encircled by the collar and badge of the Order of the Black Eagle, all surmounted by a helmet and crown and flanked by 'wild men' supporters holding standards displaying black and red eagles, all against an ermine-lined red cloak decorated with black eagles and crowns and beneath a silvered canopy with crowned eagle, the rim with a further crowned eagle interrupting the gilt band border, each eagle with the initials FR for Frederick II, King of Prussia
10 7/8in. (27.6cm.) wide over handles

Lot Essay

Probably commissioned by the Prussian East India Company as a gift for King Frederick II, who founded the Company in 1750. By 1756 it had been disbanded, as a result of the Seven Year's War. Only seven Prussian ships are recorded at Canton between 1753 and 1791. Although Chinese porcelain was occasionally commissioned by Germans through the Dutch East India Co., there was relatively little armorial made for the German market. Nearly all of it was for princely families. Apparently the ship carrying this service home from China, the Prinz von Preussen, ran aground in the East Friesan islands, but was refloated, and the service made it back to Emden, though partly damaged. One Hohenzollern descendant, Princess Hermine, wrote in her 1928 memoirs An Empress in Exile: My Days in Doorn, of pieces of the service displayed in the smoking room of the castle, after having been shipwrecked in the North Sea and salvaged in 1910. See C. Le Corbeiller, op. cit., pp. 80-83

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