In the seventeenth century English potters used local earthenware clay covered with an opaque white glaze to emulate imported Chinese porcelain dishes like the example in Drawer 15. But because they were ignorant about Chinese iconography, they tended to simplify the original imagery. In the rectangular panels around the rim of the dish seen here, the painter depicted the lotus fl owers and prunus leaves from the Chinese originals as messy squiggles. On the other hand, the painter did a better job with the traditional two-birds-on-a-rock imagery at the center of this dish. Numerous London potters, including Christian Wilhelm who painted the bottle in the display case, used this motif for many years to offer exotic-looking ceramics to customers who could not afford authentic china from Asia.

Dish, ca. 1630
London, England
Earthenware (tin-glazed)
Chipstone Foundation 1993.3