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Lot Essay
Du Pont bought over 400 pieces of this service (Chinese mixed with Samson) from Lloyd Hyde in 1950, installing it in the Eagle Hall at Winterthur in 1953, where 217 pieces can still be seen today. By tradition, the original Chinese export service had been owned by Jacob Ridgway (b. 1768), whose descendants, having moved to France in the mid-19th century, added to it with Samson replacements, then passed it down to Princess Elizabeth's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ridgway of Philadelphia.
The sepia spread-winged eagle, a simplified version of the Great Seal of the United States, was a fashionable motif on Chinese export in the first decades of the new nation. Compare with a pair of vases in the collection of the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate and illustrated by H., P. and N. Schiffer in China for America, Export Porcelain of the 18th and 19th Centuries, Exton, Pennsylvania, p. 114.
The sepia spread-winged eagle, a simplified version of the Great Seal of the United States, was a fashionable motif on Chinese export in the first decades of the new nation. Compare with a pair of vases in the collection of the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate and illustrated by H., P. and N. Schiffer in China for America, Export Porcelain of the 18th and 19th Centuries, Exton, Pennsylvania, p. 114.