A Chinese porcelain English-decorated teabowl and a plate 1st half 18th century

A Chinese porcelain English-decorated teabowl and a plate 1st half 18th century, the plate with an underglaze blue rim of four panels on a hatched ground with four flowerhead mon, later-enamelled in the Kakiemon manner with a dog of Fo above peony issuing from banded hedges, the panels of the rim with Kakiemon flowers, the teabowl later-decorated in the same palette with a bird and butterfly about a formal arrangement of flowers suspended from the rim, an iron red crossed swords mark to the base, 12.7cm max. (2)

Provenance: the Helen Espir Collection, nos. 826 and 776. The teabowl formerly in the Soame Jenyns Collection.

Illustrated: Helen Espir, European Decoration on Oriental Porcelain, p.221, pl.21 and p.222, pl.22. Also in ECC Transactions, Vol. 19, Part I, Errol Manners, The English Decoration of Oriental Porcelain, p.20, pls.45, 46a and 46b, and in Stephen Hanscombe, The Early James Giles and his Contemporary London Decorators, p.45, fig.8 and p.53, no.18.

The flowers and tendril decoration on the teabowl have been copied from Meissen, as indicated by the crossed swords mark on the base. In the past the decoration was thought to be Dutch (cf. the Victoria and Albert Museum, Accession No. C.316.1919), but the discovery of a Limehouse teapot with the same pattern and enamel colours changed academic opinion. It is now thought that the decoration was most likely done in London in the late 1740s to c.1750.