First Period Worcester Porcelain Botanical Blue-Scale Kidney Shaped Dish

Details

Description

First Period Worcester Porcelain Blue Scale Kidney-Shaped Dish with Flower Panels
Circa 1770

Few eighteenth-century English porcelains carry color the … Read more First Period Worcester Porcelain Blue Scale Kidney-Shaped Dish with Flower Panels
Circa 1770

Few eighteenth-century English porcelains carry color the way a Worcester blue scale dish does. The deep cobalt ground, built up in overlapping scales, reads almost like watered silk from across a room, and against it the reserved white panels of roses, tulips, and auriculas come forward in clear, fresh enamel color. The kidney outline is the shape Worcester used for the side dishes of a grand dessert service, and it gives the piece an easy, sculptural silhouette that a round plate never has.

Four large mirror-shaped panels alternate with four smaller vase-shaped ones around the border, each framed in tooled rococo gilding, with a further kidney-shaped panel of flowers in the center. Small flower sprigs are scattered on the white rim. The gilding is still bright and crisp.

It is a natural on a plate stand in a bookcase or on a mantel, where the cobalt will hold its own against dark paint or paneling, and equally good propped in a china cupboard among blue and white. Laid flat on a hall console or a dressing table it makes a handsome catchall for keys or jewelry. A single dish of this quality also works beautifully as the anchor of a small grouping of eighteenth-century English porcelain on a wall.

Dimensions
Width: 10 inches (25.4 cm)
Depth: 7 1/2 inches (19.1 cm)

Marks
Underglaze blue square fret mark (seal mark)

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
Good antique condition; the gilding remains bright, with no chips or cracks. A small bruise in the blue scale at four o’clock.

Historical Context
Blue grounds at Worcester date from about 1765 to the end of the First Period, and the scale blue was the most expensive of them, applied freehand by a handful of specialist painters with no way to correct the work once it was fired. The reserved-panel format followed Sevres, the flower painting Meissen. The square fret mark, an imitation of a Chinese seal, appears on the factory’s finest grounded wares from about 1768.

(Ref: NY5997-nkrr) See less