This unique Chelsea dish has no parallel in the recorded literature for form or quality of decoration.

Chinese famille-verte dish, Kangxi period (1661-1722)

The overall form and design are derived from an uncommon Chinese famille-verte lotus blossom shaped dish of the Kangxi period (1661 – 1722). It is painted in minute detail with motifs of birds and flowers inventively adapted from Japanese Kakiemon porcelain.

Chelsea Kakiemon decoration was popular in the first have of the 1750s, usually accurately copying Japanese originals or sometimes those of Meissen or Chantilly porcelain.[i] Just occasionally a bravura display of exuberance erupted as in our dish or the one in the British Museum decorated with two phoenixes.[ii]

Chelsea, The British Museum (1899,1006.48)

Condition:
Good

Provenance:
Hosford Collection (according to paper label)
Anon. sale, Sworders, 29.6.1999, lot 33
Anton Gabszewicz Collection no. 218

References:

Manners 2018
Errol Manners, ‘Inspired by Japan: Europe’s response to Kakiemon porcelain’, in Influences and Inspirations: 400 Years of Japanese Porcelain, the English Ceramic Circle, ed. Patrick Hagglund

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[i] Manners 2018 pp. 10-11.

[ii] Two of these dishes are known, both originally in the British Museum, one was deaccessioned and is now in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg.

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