Two Chinese porcelain Dutch-decorated saucer dishes 1st quarter 18th century

Two Chinese porcelain Dutch-decorated saucer dishes 1st quarter 18th century, one with original decoration of concentric bands and a cash diaper border in underglaze blue, the other plain with a brown line rim, both later-enamelled in the Kakiemon palette with birds perched on prunus, bamboo and flowering magnolia and with banded hedges, one within a flower-shaped cartouche with stylized floral designs in red and green, a decorator's mark of a single stylized character to the reverse, the other dish with highlighting in peach and gilt to the diaper borders, and a Chinese saucer in a famille verte palette, copying an original Chinese design of a cockerel standing amidst flowering peony, 21.5cm max. (3)

Provenance: the Helen Espir Collection, nos. 726, 821 and 959. The saucer purchased from the Watney Collection of Chinese Porcelain decorated in Holland and England, lot 71.

Cf. The Rijksmuseum for a saucer dish with a similar Kakiemon design to no. 821. While sympathetically painted, this dish lacks the accuracy of earlier copies of Japanese designs and was therefore probably painted around 1730, a little later than the other two dishes in this lot.