Antique Chinese Export Porcelain Dinner Plates, American Eagle Great Seal, Set of 6, Circa 1900

Details

Description

DIMENSIONS
10.25" diameter each

CONDITION
Excellent estate condition with no visible chips, cracks, or hairlines. Gilding shows light, honest wear … Read more DIMENSIONS
10.25" diameter each

CONDITION
Excellent estate condition with no visible chips, cracks, or hairlines. Gilding shows light, honest wear consistent with age and use.

DESCRIPTION

The Great Seal, painted by hand and fired onto porcelain — this is Chinese export doing what it always did best, taking an American emblem and rendering it with an artist's eye rather than a bureaucrat's. Wings thrown wide, an olive branch gripped in one talon and a sheaf of arrows in the other, thirteen gilt stars breaking through a scroll of cloud above the eagle's head. The shield across its breast is striped in red, white, and blue, unmistakable and proud without a hint of stiffness. Around the rim, a rust-red ribbon swags and dips in a continuous S, cradling alternating sprigs of fern, floret, and berry — the kind of border painted freehand by someone who had done it a thousand times and still bothered to make each loop slightly different from the last.

Provenance here is the real thing: this set came out of a single Nantucket family's island house, where it had lived since 1900 — not shuffled through dealer stock, but set on one table for well over a century. That kind of continuity is increasingly rare to find intact.

Offered here is a set of six from a larger service of twelve; its matching second half is available separately, so a full dozen can be reunited by the right buyer, or the two sets can go their own ways to two very lucky tables.

Eagle china like this has always struck the right note — patriotic without straying into kitsch, graphic enough to anchor a Federal dining room and easy enough in spirit to hold its own in a beach house sideboard. For anyone building a collection around Americana, armorial porcelain, or the eagle motif specifically, this is a genuine, well-provenanced example rather than a modern reissue chasing the look.

KEYWORDS / TAGS
Chinese Export Porcelain, American Eagle, Great Seal, Antique Dinner Plates, Set of Six, Nantucket Estate, Americana, Federal Style, Armorial Porcelain, Hand Painted Porcelain See less