A pair of plates from a service for Count Heinrich of Podewils
Scalloped plates with scallop shell appliques. The upper section decorated with a coat-of-arms flanked by Prussian eagles. Blue crossed swords mark, pressnummer 21, "P." in gold and "1." in purple. Minor wear, one plate with minor firing flaws. D 25.4 and 25.5 cm.
1741 - 42, model by Johann Joachim Kaendler.
Heinrich Count Podewils (1696 - 1760) was appointed Privy War Councillor by the Prussian King Frederick William I as early as 1720, and under Frederick II he was entrusted as Minister of War with the management of the supreme state authority of the Prussian army. Samuel Wittwer published a memo from the Berlin State Archives in 2007 in which Podewils describes how he came to receive the Meissen service. According to his own statement, he received it as thanks for his services in the Silesian War from Friedrich August II. King of Saxony (in personal union August II of Poland) at the end of 1741, together with a diamond-encrusted (miniature) portrait of the king.
Provenance
Private collection, Palatinate.
Literature
Cf. cat. Sammlung Hoffmeister, vol. II, Hamburg 1999. no. 353 ff, S. 608 f. Hoffmeister owned four plates and a tray from this service, Ole Olsen's collection housed over 100 items.
Cf. also Wittwer, Liaisons Fragiles: Exchanges of Gifts Between Saxony and Prussia in the Early Eighteenth Century, in: Cassidy-Geiger (ed), Fragile Diplomacy. Meissen Porcelain for European Courts ca. 1710 - 63, New Haven-London 2007, p. 101 f.