A blue and white ‘Sense of Smell’ dish.
Kangxi mark and period, ca. 1700.
The deep dish with a flat, slightly upturned rim, painted in underglaze blue with a group of Europeans in fashionable dress on a tiled terrace by a pavilion with a classical cornice. The lady seated to the right holds a flower to her face. The girl hands her another from a basket held by a servant, while a man in the background also holds up a flower spray. The ladies’ hair is dressed à la mode Fontanges, and the man wears a long wig. Round the sides in eight arcaded panels is repeated a design of two ladies standing on either side of a plant; one holding a flower spray and the other a fan.
This scene illustrates the popular pastime amongst the genteel society of the 17th and 18th Centuries of guessing the name of a flower from its scent. The design is taken from an unidentified print and judging from the hair-styles it probably dates to shortly before 1700, and may have been part of a set of ‘The Senses’.
Lit:
See Howard and Ayers, China for the West, vol.I, London and New York, 1978, p.78 for a discussion on the print source, where the authors suggest that it could have been by one of the Bonnart brothers, and no.36 for a similar dish in the Mottahedeh Collection, which had formerly been in the Ionides Collection. Other examples are in the Hodroff Collection, see D. Howard, The Choice of the Private Trader, London, 1994, p.41, no.7; and in the G. Duff Collection, Lisbon, illustrated by M. Beurdeley, Porcelain of the East India Companies, London, 1962, p.27, fig.12.
Diameter 34.5 cm, height 6.4 cm.
Inv. No: MW307
