An extremely rare and large Chinese export famille rose armorial porcelain charger with

the Amsterdam coat-of-arms

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Qianlong period, circa 1720-1725

 

Diam. 54 cm

 

Two gilt lions hold the Amsterdam coat-of-arms in the centre of the dish with a description beneath that reads ‘AMSTELDAM’, all set within an elaborate red and green architectural framework and two Chinese ladies on pedestals in a reces left and right. The edge of the dish has an underglaze blue pattern with six cartouches featuring pink fish and grey crabs and shrimps. The outer edge is decorated with pink and red flowers in six large cartouches.

This in Dutch called ‘karrewiel’ or cartwheel dish and is the largest of a series of 23 so-called 'provincieborden' with the arms of towns and provinces of Holland, Belgium, France and England, produced between 1710 and 1730. Since the VOC in these years hardly ordered any porcelain in China, these provincieborden probably were ordered by private Dutch merchants who were quite successful commercially with these dishes.

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The present dish is identical to a dish acquired by the KVVAK (Royal Dutch Asian Art Society) and is now on loan in the Rijksmuseum (inv. AK-MAK-1733).