393.
SAUCER DISHES
CHINESE PORCELAIN DECORATED IN UNDERGLAZE BLUE,
OVER-DECORATED IN HOLLAND WITH OVERGLAZE
POLYCHROME ENAMELS AND GOLD
QING DYNASTY (1644–1911), CA. 1720–1725,
OVER-DECORATED CA. 1720–1730
HEIGHT 3.4 CM; RIM DIAMETER 20.3 CM
HEIGHT 3.9 CM; RIM DIAMETER 21.4 CM
INV. NO. 672
Two deep circular saucer dishes, with an
everted lipped rim and a very receding small
foot. Thinly potted in Jingdezehen in very
translucent porcelain with carved floral
decoration all over the inner surface.
Decorated in underglaze cobalt blue with a
diaper border and on the reverse with four
scattered branches, all under a bluish glaze.
The dishes were then over-decorated in
Holland in
Kakiemon
style with two large
parrots in blue, turquoise, red and gold
enamels, with feathers carefully outlined in
black and red. One is perched on an old
gnarled flowering rose bush, its head turned
to the left watching the other bird, which is
perched with its right claw gripping the
branch of an old broken tree branch, nibbling
a cherry held in its left claw, while two more
cherries hang from the branch, almost
touching a carnation in flower. A
multicoloured butterfly hovers beside each
bird. The edge of the rim is dark red.
The polychrome decoration, added in
Holland, is based on an engraving dated 1580
by Adriaen Collaert, an engraver from
Antwerp, who drew and published a series
of sixteen engravings of birds, entitled
Avium Vivae Icones.
An engraving in this
series (also published by Visscher in the
1620s), with the caption
Psitaci duplex
genus
, 1 portrays the two parrots in a north
European landscape, missing from these
plates and replaced by a rose bush, flowers
and butterflies (fig. 73).
Parrots were fashionable pets in Europe in
the eighteenth century, and a common motif
on Chinese porcelain decorated in Europe
and in Delft.
Although very little is known about the
identity of the decorators active in Holland,
whether they were Dutch or even whether
they worked there permanently, the drawing,
identical to that shown on the underside of a
bird cage manufactured in Delft, 2 was
thought perhaps to have been done in the
Gerrit van de Kaade workshop. 3 For Helen
Espir, there remains no doubt that this
parrot motif was painted in Delft, not only
because of this cage, but also of the brush
back painted in low-fired enamels property
of the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire,
Brussels 4 .
The same parrot can also be found in
Portuguese tile panels, based on an
engraving by Adriaen Collaert but painted
more freely, as is customary in tile painting,
where the engravings are not copied, but
rather reinterpreted. The parrot’s stance with
its tail touching the background is more
veristic than the interpretation given to it in
the plates. It also shows the broken branch,
although here it continues into a stalk with
cherries, whereas the plates, like the
engraving, illustrate two pieces of fruit
hanging from it. The parrot is nibbling at a
cherry, isolated in the dishes, and stuck to a
twig that it holds with its left paw, in the
tile panel (fig. 72).
This engraving is yet another example of the
circulation of engravings in Europe, as well as
in Asia, and their frequent use as models for
decoration.
There is a slightly different shaped plate
without the incised and carved decoration
but with the same parrot pattern in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, given
by Gulland in 1907 (inv. 680-1907), 5 and
Helen Espir illustrates another much bigger
dish with a Japanese style border from a
private English collection. 6
1 Espir, 2005, pp. 143-44, no. 44.
2 Ayers, Impey and Mallet, 1990, p. 242, no. 265, quoting
Havard, 1878, p. 153.
3 Idem, quoting Winkworth, 1928, p. 302.
4 Espir, ibid., p. 146, no. 46.
5 Ayers, Impey and Malet, ibid.
6 Espir, ibid., pp. 144-45, no. 45.64.219
360 .
ORIENTAL PORCELAIN DECORATED IN EUROPE
Figure 73. Engraving of Parrots in a northern European landscape by Adriaen Collaert, 1580.
Avium Vivae Icones
© British Library, Shelfmark 436 b.24 (1), Folio 10
Figure 72. Faience with stanniferous enamel and cobalt-
blue decoration.
Portugal, Lisbon, 1742