492 - Meissen Plate with Indian Rock and Flower Painting, Polychrome, First Quality, 20th c.

Meissen Plate with Indian Rock and Flower Painting, Polychrome, First Quality, 20th c. Porcelain, polychrome painted, glazed. Plate by the State Porcelain Manufactory Meissen with a plain rim and a gold edge. In the well the Indian rock and flower painting: from a rock picked out in blue, yellow and green above iron-red hatching grows a purple stem from which peonies and chrysanthemums in purple and iron red spring with blue and green leaves; above it an ascending flowering branch, at the left of the well a second branch with a peony. On the base the underglaze blue crossed swords without cancellation strokes and a pattern number in gold. A hanger is glued to the reverse. First quality. Good condition. D. 25.5 cm. The pattern belongs to the group of Indian painting, the historical technical term for stylised East Asian flower patterns; in the 18th c. they were called Indian flowers, in distinction from the German flowers, and were current at Meissen from 1720 in the early Hoeroldt period. By 1731 Johann Gregorius Hoeroldt had developed a palette of 16 enamel colours, whereas only five had been available at the beginning of the century. Besides the rock and flower painting the manufactory produces a rock and bird painting, in polychrome enamel as well as in underglaze blue.