FINE CERAMICS AND WORKS OF ART
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An extremely rare and very
fine Chelsea Botanical Dessert Dish of ‘Hans Sloane’ type, the deeply
recessed dish painted with a very high degree of detail with an example of
a Tiger Lily in full flower with reflexed petals, its stamens painted with
an extraordinary degree of botanical accuracy. The flower head issues from
what appears to be a sprig and leaves of the Fremontana Californica, its
broad serrated leaves painted in two tones of green and veined in puce, a
blue hairy caterpillar loops its way up the cut stem, around the rim of
the dish crawl further shadowed insects, moths and butterflies including a
beautifully entemologically correct specimen of the very rare English
Large Blue butterfly, with its characteristically pale dusky pastel blue
wings flecked with black detailing, within a brown line rim.
Circa 1755.
Diameter: 9ins. (23cms.)
Mark: Red anchor mark to the underside of the dish.
It must be pointed out clearly here that a depiction of a real specimen of
butterfly, such as on this example, is highly unusual, when so many others
are purely interpolations of the artists involved. The Large Blue is a
native butterfly within the southern parts of the British Isles and is
found in the chalky areas. It is now one of the rarest we have and was
thought to have become extinct until a sighting a few years ago.The deep
shape of the dish is more uncommon than the flatter wares bearing this
type of decoration. See John C. Austin, ‘Chelsea Porcelain at
Williamsburg’, pl.78-85 for very fine examples of this type of decoration
and this precise shape, together with a real specimen of a Painted Lady
butterfly on the silver shaped dish pl. 85.
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