A pair of Meissen porcelain plates from the dinner service for Count von Podewils
Plates with scalloped rims applied with six scallop shells. The upper part of the rim emblazoned with two Prussian eagles holding the Podewils coat-of-arms with the collar of the Order of the Black Eagle. Blue crossed swords mark, dreher's number 21, P. in gold. With minor wear. D 25.5 cm.
1741, model by Johann Joachim Kaendler.
Heinrich Count Podewils (1696 - 1760) was appointed Privy Councillor of War 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 memorandum 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 Frederick August II of Saxony (in personal union August II of Poland) at the end of 1741, together with a diamond (miniature) portrait of the king. The family must have continued to use the service after Count Henry's death, as evidenced by the later additions to the service by KPM.
Provenance
Christie's London, 20th May 2015, lot 14.
German private collection.
Literature
Cf. cat. Sammlung Hoffmeister, vol. II, Hamburg 1999. no. 353 ff, S. 608 f. Hoffmeister owned four plates and a tray, and over 100 pieces from this service were housed in the collection of Ole Olsen.
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.