A Chinese porcelain Dutch-decorated plate, the plain form later-enamelled with a Kakiemon design of two quails pecking at millet beneath flowering stems, a grasshopper perched above, the rim with four panels of quail within a cracked ice and prunus ground in a famille vert palette.
This unusual but well-executed design once again demonstrates the confusion that Dutch-decorators held over the source of Oriental decoration, combining on one plate elements of Japanese and Chinese designs to attractive, but distinctly European, effect.
Although the asymmetry, colouring and white space of the central design are typical of Japanese Kakiemon, the grasshopper tends to be a favourite motif with painters of both Dutch decorated Chinese porcelain and Delft versions of this pattern.
The famille verte ‘cracked-ice’ border also occurs in conjunction with this pattern on Chantilly porcelain of the period 1735-45. Many Dutch workshops began to close down in the 1720s, and it is likely that artists migrated to France, where they continued to paint familiar patterns on porcelain.
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