CIRCA 1720

The current plate and the following two are part of a series of six plates made for the Dutch market called 'Bubble' plates, since they were quite likely to have been made to satirize the South Sea Bubble 'mania' which occurred in the early 18th Century. The South Sea Bubble refers to the South Sea Company which was a British joint stock company founded in 1711. The company was granted a monopoly to trade in Spain's South American colonies as part of a treaty during the War of Spanish Succession. In return, the company assumed the national debt England had incurred during the war. They then set to talking up its stock with "the most extravagant rumors" of the value and of its potential trade in the New World which was followed by a wave of "speculating frenzy". This speculation mania led to a great economic bubble known as the South Sea Bubble in 1720, which caused financial ruin for many. By the time the Bubble had burst in 1720 it had been satirized in books, prints, playing cards, and ceramics such as the present lot. These series of plates are also frequently known as 'Commedia dell' Arte' plates after the famous Dutch novel of that time 'Het Groote Tafereel der Dwaasheid'. Which is a curious collection of cartoons, poems and comedies about the speculations that began in France and reached the Netherlands just in time before the bubble had popped. Plates like the current lot were possibly ordered via Chinese merchants in Batavia, for at that time the VOC was not yet trading directly with China. Their purpose as a series is not known, perhaps they were meant as a teasing gift for one who had miscalculated and lost money with the crash. Nor is it known if prints, drawings or even models of Delft faience were used by the porcelain painter. It is perhaps not coincidental that this narrative genre of ceramics recalls the "merrymen" plates in English earthenware dating from the late seventeenth century. These sets, although not pictorial, are related in comprising six plates, each inscribed with one line of a six-line rhyme.
See Howard and Ayers, China for the West, London, 1978, vol. I, p. 234 and 235 for a discussion of the background to these plates. A similar set of plates is illustrated by Hervëeut and Bruneau, La Porcelaine des Compagnies des Indes; Decor Occidental, Paris, 1986, fig. 9.54-9.60.
A series of six 'Bubble' plates were sold at Christie's, Amsterdam, 23 October 1986, lots 130 -135; another series at Christie's, Amsterdam, 15 October 1990, lot 142; one at Christie's, London, 7 April 1997, lot 89; a series of six at The Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann sale, Christie's, Amsterdam, 10 April 2002, lot 1308; and a series at Christie's, Amsterdam, 3 May 2005, lot 120.