The exterior painted on each side with 2 Moors on a grassy mound, dressed in
Ottoman style
- one wearing a yellow robe and playing a circular horn facing away from the other
in turquoise,
playing a trumpet suspending a yellow standard, within gilt spear-head and spaced lozenge
bands,
the spear-head band repeated at
the footrim,
reserved against a black ground, the interior with a gilt
floral sprig.
The more complex border denotes that this version is likely from the “first order”*.
Cf. D. Howard and J. Ayers, op.cit., vol.1,
no.299, p.305, for a bowl with this design,
where the authors suggest that the figures are wearing Ottoman costumes
and
that this was undoubtedly a specially commissioneddesign, since the shapes of pieces are those of
tea-servicesused in England and the Continent c.1740,
and that it illustrates music played 'eastward of the Levant'.
They discuss the possibility that the design may have been byCornelis Pronk.
A number of pieces with slight
variations of the rim design are known, some also with thicker enamel.
A coffee cup and two saucers in the Hodroff
Collection, illustrated by D. S. Howard, op.cit., no.202, p.178
show two rim variations.
* Mr. Howard suggests that the
cup and saucer with more elaborate rim decoration, which also
have thicker black enamel, may well represent a
“first order”.
Due to the expense of producing this service, economies in decoration were made on subsequent
orders,
as shown in a second saucer with only spearhead borders.
Condition : Excellent; good enamels and gilt;
the rim slightly our of level; a reinforced firing flaw to the footrim
2-5/8" x 4-5/8"
SOLD
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#6080 |
