434 - Two rare black-ground 'Trumpeter' plates

Two rare black-ground 'Trumpeter' plates China, early Qianlong period, ca, 1740 D. 22,8/ 22,6 cm Painted with two 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, reserved against a black ground. The decoration is arranged in an unusual way on one plate. German private collection, assembled before 2007 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 commissioned design, since the shapes of pieces are those of tea-services used 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 by Cornelis 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. The more complex border denotes that one plate is likely from the 'first order', Due to the expense of producing this ware, economies in decoration were made on subsequent orders.