The centre of each dish depicts Europeans seated in a landscape setting, playing with children. These scenes are framed with scrolling vines in black enamel, and the rims are decorated with alternating blue and red panels of stylised dragons amongst scrollwork. The reverse sides are painted with a cracked ice design in deep blue and scattered with white blossom – the base with a sprig of flowers and a fruit, against a white ground.

provenance
Eugene O Perkins.

published
‘Chinese Painted Enamels of the 18th Century’, The Chinese Porcelain Company, 1993 – plate 51.

A similar European subject matter dish with a cracked ice design on the reverse – but square in shape – is illustrated in ‘Chinese Painted Enamels’ by Michael Gillingham, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1978 – plate 31.