Sold Ceramics - Sold Chinese wares over-decorated in the West 1700-1800 - Dutch over-decorated Amsterdams Bont - Kakiemon Designs - Page 1

Object 2012188

Dish

China

1730-1750, over-decorated in the Netherlands, Amsterdams Bont, c.1740

Height 30 mm (0.91 inch), diameter of rim 165 mm (6.50 inch), diameter of footring 84 mm (3.31 inch), weight 183 grams (6.46 ounce (oz.))

Dish on footring, slightly everted rim. Undecorated. Over-decorated, in a Kakiemon-style, in iron-red, black, green and other overglaze enamels, in the Netherlands, Amsterdams Bont, c.1740 with an underglaze brown-edged rim, in the centre a flowering branch in between two brushwood fences and two birds in flight. On the sides two wide spread groups of flowering prunus, pine and bamboo plants issuing from a rocky mound. The reverse is undecorated. Marked on the base with, pseudo-Chinese characters painted in overglaze iron-red.

Decorated with a stylised rendering of the 'Three Friends' pattern round the border. This in combined with a central pattern in which Kakiemon features are combined in an un-Japanese way, filling the space but without the Japanese sense of space being part of the composition. While the banded hedge, the birds and bamboo leaves are in classic Kakiemon style, the strange bold flowers have no readily traceable Japanese counterpart and seem rather to be a European invention which combines elements of a pomegranate fruit and a hibiscus flower. This pattern with variations according to the size of the object, is known on several plates, dishes and a bowl in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The dishes in the Ashmolean Museum have a decorator's mark of pseudo Chinese characters in red enamel on the base indicating that they were decorated in the same workshop. (Espir 2005, pp.87-88)

The hedge of rice straw, known as a 'banded hedge' because of the ties binding it together, is one of the trademarks of Kakiemon design as are flying and perching birds, tigers and the bamboo leaves on the ground, Tigers both fierce and playful, feature prominently in kakiemon designs. Painted in yellow, red and blue with black-stripes, they crouch and snarl and prepare to leap after prey such as the bird perched on the bamboo tree. (Espir 2005, p.82)

The four pseudo-Chinese characters on the base are, most likely, made up by the Dutch Amsterdams Bont over-decorator. Important was to create an Oriental effect, the 'chinoiserie'.

For an identically, over-decorated in Kakiemon style, dish, please see:

European Decoration on Oriental Porcelain 1700-1830, (H. Espir, Jorge Welsh Books, London, UK, 2005), p.87, cat. 19.

Condition: A shallow glaze frit to the reverse rim.

Reference:

Espir 2005, p.82, pp.87-88 & cat.19

Price: Sold.