Meissen, ca. 1730.

Yellow ground with a blossom-shaped reserve, painted with a "Hôô bird” and three blossoming branches and three further reserves with similar blossoming branches. Brown edge line. Underglaze blue sword mark, Johanneum number N=148-W.

D 34.5 cm.

With traces of old restoration, including repainting after a breakage.

Provenance:
Royal Saxon Collections, Japanese Palace, Dresden, delivered in 1734.

This is the only known service with a colored background, commissioned in 1730 by August the Strong. The service consisted of 39 plates, 10 tureens and ice-cream pots as well as 33 bowls and confectionery bowls and was delivered by the Meissen Manufactory to the Japanese Palace in 1734 (Boltz, Keramos 153, 1996, p. 91).

The service was apparently not only used to decorate the Japanese Palace, but was also used on official State occasions. A note in the inventory mentions the breakage of a plate from this service during a dinner for the Prussian King Frederick II in 1777 in Christianstadt, near the Silesian border. (Eikelmann, Schneider Lustheim Collection, Munich 2004, p.174).

Comparable items: Dresden Porcelain Collection (Pietsch, Triumph der blauen Schwerter, 2010, p. 97), Dr. Ernst Schneider Collection in Lustheim (Weber 2013, p. 416 and No. 429); Arnhold New York Collection (Cassidy-Geiger 2008, No. 185a-b).