Sword mark, circa 1740.

Polychrome painted, gold decorated. Ø 24 cm.

Flat plate with serrated, upturned rim. On the lower third a checkerboard brocade pattern with golden lotus flowers and leaf-like serrated border line to the white surface. Over it oak horn decor. Brown border line. Minimal glaze flaws in the mirror.

This unusual and imaginatively designed plate thrives on two almost contradictory yet related representations : the graphic geometric arrangement of finely painted squares (checkerboard) and a Kakiemon painting in the white area, also known as "squirrels, vines and brushwood hedge". In the flag of the plate there is another apparently flying animal. The boundary line of both areas resembles the serrated edge of a leaf. Opinions differ about the animals depicted on the plate. Two rodents can be seen. They also entered the porcelain literature as "squirrels snacking on grapes". One (yellow) sits snacking on a bamboo branch and could also be a large mouse. The other hovers on the flag and is reminiscent of a flying squirrel, or perhaps a fox. Originally found on 16th-century Nanking porcelain, this motif was picked up and worked on by Japanese porcelain painters and eventually made its way to Meissen, where it was involved in the Hoym-Lemaire affair (see above, Weber, Meissen Porcelains with Decorations Based on East Asian Models). In Meissen it was perpetuated on bowls, leaf bowls and serrated plates from about 1730. A plate of this type can be found, among others, in the Ernst Schneider collection (Lustheim Palace, Munich). In the inventory catalog of porcelains with decorations after East Asian models in Lustheim Castle, Mrs. Julia Weber has very well elaborated the decor and also forms. A bowl of this type is also kept by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Literature : See also Gielke (2003), p. 116/cat.-no. 99.