Page 194 - Bonhams Catalog Cohen and Cohen Jan 24, 2023 New York

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A RARE FAMILLE ROSE ARMORIAL RETICULATED SMALL Active participation in the maritime ‘China trade’ in the 18th century
could, with a modicum of luck, be an exceptionally profitable
OVAL DISH FROM THE OFFICIAL SERVICE FOR THE commercial venture. Company directors, ships’ captains and
HONOURABLE ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY
Jiaqing period, circa 1805 supercargoes, joint stock freelance investors and indeed the Company
Centrally enameled principally in iron-red, black, pink and lavishly gilt officials all stood to make very handsome profits if a ship returned
with the large arms of the Company above the motto Auspicio regis et safely from Asia to offer its valuable and perishable cargoes onto the
senatus Angliae, within a wide pierced H-pattern border and narrow London retail market run by ‘Chinamen’ (Western specialist dealers)
band of petal lappets at the rim. through the very regular late Spring auctions of tea, spices, textiles and
10 1/2in (27cm) wide ceramics at auction in East India House, Leadenhall Street.
$1,200 - 1,800 According to the distinguished genealogist (and dealer in Chinese
armorial porcelain) David Sanctuary Howard, this service was ordered
嘉慶時期 約1805年 粉彩描金不列顛東印度公司玲瓏橢圓小盤 for use by East India Company officers in India, possibly to celebrate
the bi-centenary either of the ‘New Company’ or of the merger ten
years later. See Howard (1974), where the author records that this
Published:
Cohen & Cohen, Baroque & Roll, Antwerp, 2015, pp. 148-149, no. 91 official service was used by the Company in Bombay and Madras and
that some Governors were known to have brought parts of it back
出版： to England when they completed their term of office. It must have
倫敦Cohen & Cohen古董行，《Baroque & Roll》，安特衛普，2015 been an immense service (and special commission); or more likely it
年，頁148-149，圖版編號91 comprised several services of the same design. It is interesting to note
that the small British coat of arms in one quadrant (the upper dexter)
The Honorable English East India Company had been re-established was only adopted in 1801, giving this service a very clear starting date
by British Act of Parliament in 1698, and subsequently came to for its creation.
incorporate after 1709 an earlier English East India Company (with
a different coat of arms) which had been incorporated by Queen The border pattern is inspired by a similar one in a pattern book
Elizabeth I in 1600 and active from its base at Bantam in Java from of 1770 used by the industry-leading Staffordshire potter Josiah
circa 1600. The arms on this rare dish are copied from the bookplate Wedgwood, which was used on the factory’s innovatory creamware
of the second, or so-called ‘New East India Company’, trading from body for several decades
1709.
References: an identical dish in the V&A, no. 335J-1898, purchased
From this Javanese ‘factory’ (trading post), British merchants sparred in 1898 for £13 10s, which is illustrated by Kerr & Mengoni, 2011,
fiercely with both the Dutch as these two mutually antagonistic p. 9, plate 1; Howard, 1974, p. 774, for more details of items now
European Protestant monopolist companies sought to create Asian dispersed from this service; and Le Corbeiller, 1974, No. 51, p. 120 for
trading routes in the face of aggressive hostility from the (Catholic) two similar dishes.
Spanish and Portuguese trading empires already established
respectively at bases in Luzon and Macao.

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