Page 46 - Chinese Export Porcelain MARCHANT GALLERY 2015

29. Plate, decorated in grisaille, gilt and iron-red with ‘The Seamstress’ or ‘The Embroiderer’, seated with her back to a
window with ships beside a tall building on a cliff, her robes heightened in gilt and her lips in iron-red, encircled by a
gilt spearhead border at the rim.
9 �⁄₁₆ inches, 23 cm diameter.
Qianlong, circa 1750.
• From the collection of Dr Hardouin, Nantes, western France.
• A similar plate is illustrated by John Goldsmith Phillips in China Trade Porcelain, An Account of Its Historical
Background, Manufacture, and Decoration and a Study of the Helena Woolworth McCann Collection, pl. 9, p. 75, where
the author also illustrates a tea set of this pattern, pl. 58, p. 140; another two similar plates are illustrates by François
& Nicole Hervouët & Yves Bruneau in La Porcelaine des Compagnies des Indes, no. 6.47 & 6.48, p. 131.
• A plate with different borders is illustrated by William R. Sargent in Treasures of Chinese Export Ceramics, from the
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, no. 181, p. 339, where the author notes the design is one of several
variations on the theme.
• A complete garniture similarly decorated with the lady facing the window, the building and ships transposed, was
sold by Christie’s London in their auction of The J. Louis Binder Collection of Chinese Export Art, 17th June 2003, lot
169, pp. 116/7.

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