Plate with the coat of arms of Friesland, China, 1710 – 1725, porcelain, Ø 46,8 cm, on loan from Ottema-Kingma Stichting.
Around 1700, the custom arose to send printed or drawn examples from Europe to China, which were then copied by the Chinese potters. This is called Chine de commande. In the eighteenth century, this became very popular. Chinese porcelain was decorated according to the wishes of the foreign customers, as long as it was paid for.
The central coat of arms design in this group of twenty-one must have been a special commission. At this time, the Dutch East India Company was the largest official client, but there are no known VOC commissions for these coats of arms dishes, so it is probably a private commission. But were they used in the Netherlands or by the Dutch VOC personnel in Batavia? Who made the choice of the coats of arms in this series? And what are England and France doing between the Dutch and Flemish dishes? In short: there are still many unanswered questions.
What we do know is that these dishes were clearly not intended for use at the table, but to function as eye-catchers in wealthy interiors. The large Friesland dish is painted in underglaze cobalt blue and enamel colours in the famille verte style. Famille verte is a specific type of Chinese export porcelain from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in which the green ground colour predominates. The coat of arms is in the centre, and the rim has a diamond pattern in underglaze blue, with six recesses on which flower stems can be seen.
Family crests
The Princessehof also has a lot of porcelain decorated with coats of arms that was actually used: shaving bowls, drinking cups, potpourri, plates, cups, tea caddies, milk jugs, etc. Entire sets of services were ordered by a family, with the family coat of arms usually forming the central decoration. In China itself, the use of coats of arms services did not occur, but in Europe there was a long tradition of this. Family coats of arms originated in the Middle Ages. Knights and lords used them to distinguish between friend and foe in a war. Over time, it became customary to pass these arms on to the next generation, and thus the tradition of bearing a family coat of arms originated. In the eighteenth century, some 600 to 700 coats of arms services were made in China for the Dutch market. The most famous of these is the coat of arms of Adriaan Valckenier (1695-1751), governor-general of the East Indies. He ordered no fewer than fifteen different sets of services. Other European countries active in trade in Asia also ordered large quantities, such as the Portuguese, British, Spanish, French and Swedes.
Eva Ströber, former curator Asian ceramics at Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics, with thanks to Aafke Koole.
