A pair of Berlin KPM porcelain dishes from a later addition to the service for Count von Podewils
Deep dishes 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 sceptre mark. D 24.3 cm.
Around 1780.
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, 10th July 2007, lot 222.
Private collection, Westphalia, offered in Lempertz Berlin auction 1018 on 12th October 2013, lot 52.
Literature
For more on this service see 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.