THREE CHINESE BLUE AND WHITE DISHES, 18TH CENTURY

The group comprises: an octagonal dish decorated to the centre with two hounds in a European river landscape, the rim is decorated with floral festoons; a 'cuckoo in the house' dish, decorated with a bird in flight looking at a bird in a house which has usurped his place, the rim is decorated with cartouches reserved in blue; and a dish decorated with a boy between two rams before a pavilion amongst pine, below two cranes in flight.

The ‘hounds’ dish: 2.2 cm. high x 22.2 cm. wide The ‘cuckoo in the house’ dish: 2.5 cm. high x 22.5 cm. diam. The ‘boy and rams’ dish: 3.2 cm. high x 28.5 cm. diam.

Catalogue notes: The 'hounds' pattern is known in two versions, after a Dutch original - one with a figure and a boat, the other with two dogs. Compare a dish illustrated in Elinor Gordon, Collecting Chinese Export Porcelain, New York, 1982, p. 57.

The 'cuckoo in the house' pattern was a popular pattern in the Netherlands in the 18th century, and one is illustrated in Christiaan Jorg, Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade, The Hague, 1982, pl. 82; and a further in the Fondation de l’Hermitage in Lausanne and is illustrated in John Ayers, The Chinese Porcelain Collection of Marie Vergottis, 2004, no. 47.