A fine Meissen octagonal plate from the Christie-Miller service c.1740

A fine Meissen octagonal plate from the Christie-Miller service c.1740, the well finely painted with a scene of figures standing at the quayside before an Italian palace, a ship being loaded behind, the cavetto with four shaped panels of figures in landscapes in purpurmalerei reserved on a gilt diaper band, the wide rim with similar scenes in polychrome enamels reserved in quatrefoil panels on a wide scrolling foliate gilt and black border, blue crossed swords mark, 24cm.

The scenes depicted on this service are derived from etchings by Melchior Küsel after Johann Wilhelm Baur. The figures on this plate bear close relation to those from The View of the Palace at Muran of the Count Widman of Ständig, while the statues on top of the quayside buildings are more akin to those in another print of Venetian palaces; both prints dating from 1681.

Although it is still not known for whom this service was originally made, there has been some suggestion that it was a gift from Augustus III to the French Court, based on the quality of the decoration executed by the factory's leading painters including Christian Friedrich Herold and Georg Heintze, and lent weight by the marriage of the Dauphin to Augustus's daughter in 1747.

The service appears to have entered the Christie-Miller family in 1840 when Samuel Christy, an English businessman and politician, is said to have purchased some 72 pieces from a member of the Orleans family. Samuel adopted the name Christie-Miller in 1862 following his inheritance of Britwell Library in Buckinghamshire from his distant relative, William Henry Miller. On Samuel's death in 1889 the service passed to Wakefield Christie-Miller, whose descendants lived for many years at Clarendon Park near Salisbury. The service remained in the family until 1970 when it was sold at Sotheby's in London. Until that time a plate from the same service, which remains in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, accession no. 1976-1855, and was previously in the Bernal Collection, had been the only other documented plate of this type.