The entire inner surface of the plate with a wavy rim is decorated in relief with concentrically arranged, curved shell ribs. An additional relief decoration, incorporated into the seashell structures, appears in the well with two swans swimming on the waves of a reed-fringed body of water, facing each other. To the left is a heron holding a carp in its beak with its head thrown back: another heron flies over it. The restrained painterly decoration is limited to the lip with ‘Indian’ and scattered flowers, the Brühl-Kolowrat-Krakowsky alliance coat of arms. In contrast to all the other preserved plates belonging to the Swan Service, the painted decoration only differs in one detail: the gold border of stylised three-pointed leaves does not run along the edge of the plate, but along the edge between the lip and the well.
Provenance
Heinrich Count Brühl (1700-1763); on loan from Count Brühl to the Dresden Museum of Decorative Arts from 1920 (no. 1160); relocated from the Dresden Museum of Decorative Arts to Reichstädt Castle in Saxony due to the war; lost since 1945; it cannot be ruled out that it is part of the objects looted from the Dresden Museum of Decorative Arts in 1945.
Literature / Source
Christine von Brühl: Schwäne in Weiß und Gold, Geschichte einer Familie, München, 2021; Ulrich Pietsch, Schwanenservice - Meissener Porzellan für Heinrich Graf von Brühl, Leipzig, 2000, S. 95, Abb. 70 (links unten); Staatliche Kunstammlungen Dresden, Porzellansammlung
