A round Meissen porcelain dish with red dragons and K.H C.W. mark
Decorated in the centre with two circling fenghuang birds and around the lip with two gold-scaled dragons and Chinese knot motifs with scrolls and coins. Blue crossed swords mark, illegible impressed mark and incised mark I, owner's mark K.H C.W. in purple. D 19 cm.
Last quarter 18th / first half 19th C.
Work on the Dresden court service with the Red Dragon ordered by King August III began in early November 1734. Deliveries to the Japanese Palace, the Dresden Court Confectionery and Court Kitchen are recorded from 1735 at the latest. Initially, the tableware pieces left the manufactory only with the underglaze blue sword mark, i.e. without any other owner's mark. The purple initials were only added to the repeat orders from 1739/40 onwards or after the inventory by the head kitchen master Christoph Wilhelm von Kessel on 10th December 1764. For the early pieces of the service with red dragon, only the ownership marks K.H.C. and K.H.K. for the Royal Court Confectionery and the Royal Court Kitchen are documented in the archives.
There is no record of the purple K.H.C.W. as an owner's mark for the "Königliche Hof-Conditorey Warschau" in this period. Julia Weber first found the K.H C.W. mark in the workshop records of the piecework painters from 1790, who marked porcelains with popular service designs in this way.
Provenance
Röbbig, Munich.
Private collection, Palatinate.
Literature
This service is discussed in detail in Weber, Meißener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern, vol. II, Munich 2013, 246 - 264. For the K.H C.W. mark see ibid. p. 259.