Master Art

English Market

Price:  £3,800

A Chinese export porcelain oval meatdish decorated in underglaze blue with a scene of a large mansion surrounded by trees with four large birds (pheasants), the rim with European style scrolling,

This meatdish is from a well known Chinese service that appears to have an image of Burghley House. The style of the drawing and the border suggest that it is copying a European ceramic original, possibly English delft. The building is identified by Howard & Ayers 1974, from the similarity with a grisaille image on a Chinese punchbowl of circa 1735 that is still at Burghley (No cer0075).
Also at Burghley is an English delftware dish (No cer0728)  with a blue and white view of Burghley, with a large tree to the left and several to the right in a composition resembling the Chinese one, though lacking the birds, or any decorative border. Another example is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (No C.1569-1928). These are thought to derive from a print by Johannes Kip (1653-1722)  in Nouveau Théatre de la Grande Bretagne, 1715 after a drawing by Leonard Knyff (1650-1722).

References: Howard & Ayers 1978, p261; Archer, Michael, English Delftware, exhibition catalogue, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (undated, circa 1972-3), No 112, an example of the English delftware dish.