KANGXI (1662-1722)

This design is probably after a design by Frederick van Frytom (1652-1702), an important Dutch pottery-painter, and may have been taken from one of his delftware plates. The rim decoration is probably inspired by a silver original. Although known as 'Deshima Island' plates, having been thought to depict Deshima Island in Nagasaki Bay where the Dutch had their Japanese factory, they are now considered more likely to depict marsh-land near Scheveningen in Holland. Very similar plates with this design were also made in Japan. See D. S. Howard, The Choice of the Private Trader, London, 1994, p. 44, no. 11, for an almost identical plate, which is now in the Hodroff Gallery in the Winterthur Museum, Delaware.