TWELVE BERLIN IMPERIAL PLATES FROM THE 'DAMASKUS SERVICE' OF KAISER WILHELM II

It is not known why this service, decorated in the Chinese manner, is called the 'Damaskus service'. It has been suggested that the Emperor was given a plate as a present while travelling to the Orient (he visited Damascus in Syria in 1898), and that this formed the basis of the decoration for the Berlin service. The first documented large delivery of 530 flat plates was made on 26th January 1904 and cost 9,540 Marks. In 1919 the service was removed from the Neue Palais, Potsdam (along with two other services) and delivered to his home at Huis Doorn. After the Emperor's death, the service was delivered to Schloss Hohenzollern.

For a discussion of this service see Roland Peters, 'Porcelain by KPM in the Eastern Oriental style', Keramos (October 1995), Vol. 150, p. 104. Over 900 designs of specimen plants were produced between 1903 and 1905, and these still survive in the KPM archive at Schloss Charlottenburg. Some of the specimen plants have not been identified, but the other specimens are partly Asian and partly European.