Pair of plates of the Company of the Indies, XIX century.
Enamelled porcelain.
Some damage
Measurements: 24 cm (diameter).
Pair of porcelain plates made in China for export to Europe. They have enamelled decorations in high and low temperature colours, in the Rose Family style, representing flowers in the backgrounds and garlands that run around the entire rim of the plates.
Objects of Chinese origin, such as porcelain, have been known in the West since ancient times. As some of the Prado Museum's catalogues state, "Chinese manufacturers soon realised that Europeans were not experts in porcelain, and produced a type of export porcelain, vulgar, even flawed, but which in the eyes of Westerners were authentic works of art. Once the trade was regularly organised, the India Companies supplied Chinese artists with European models, both for forms and decoration. Throughout the 18th century, the blue-and-white series persisted, but of inferior quality, which was then called Nanjing porcelain, and especially the "familie rose" type.