AN ENGLISH DELFTWARE DATED ROYAL DOUBLE PORTRAIT PLATE OF WILLIAM III AND MARY II

This plate is one of three recorded examples, all dated 1691 and painted in this distinctive style with royal portraits of William III and Queen Mary II. The other two have the initials 'F / IE' and would appear to be from a service.1 The present lot would appear to be the only dated example with this leaf border design which is found on other pieces made in London. A plate with the same design of leaf border, dated 1690 and painted with a vase of flowers is illustrated by Louis Lipski and Michael Archer, Dated English Delftware, London, 1984, p. 58, no.186. An undated William and Mary portrait example is illustrated by Michael Archer, Delftware in the Fitzwilliam Museum, London, 2013, p. 86, B.5 and a caudle-cup painted by the same hand with similar portraits was sold from the Collection of the late G.F. Glenny, at Sotheby's in London on July 24 1956, lot 71.

1. For two other plates of this type See Antony Ray, English Delftware Pottery in the Robert Hall Warren Collection, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, London, 1968, no. 19 and Garry Atkins, An Exhibition of English Pottery, Exhibition Catalogue, March 1993, London, p. 6, no. 10.