A rare set of twelve Chinese export porcelain plates bearing the arms of Jan Albert Sichterman (1692-1764)
Each decorated in iron red, gold, brown, green, purple and blue, with in the center and upper rim, the Sichterman coat-of-arms of a red squirrel on a gold ground, nibbling at a green leaf, on an oval shield with a coronet on top.
Diam. 23 cm (each)
Jan Albert Sichterman (Groningen 1692 - 1764) commissioned this, and seven other dinner services, coffee and tea services and numerous other pieces of Chinese porcelain with his coat-of-arms. At 24, after a duel in which he wounded his opponent, Jan Albert had to flee the Netherlands. In 1716 he arrived in Batavia (Jakarta), and a year later, he was sent to Hooghly, the Dutch factory in Bengal. Here he made a splendid career, perhaps because in 1721 he married Sibylla Volkera Sadelijn (1699-1781), daughter of Jacob Sadelijn, Director of Bengal from 1727 till 1734. Jan Albert succeeded his father-in-law as Director of Bengal in 1734 till 1744, when he returned to Holland as commander and admiral of the return fleet, taking a large part of his armorial porcelain collection with him. Many pieces had already been sent to the Netherlands in advance.
In Bengal, Jan Albert was active in the cotton and silk trade for the VOC and also in very lucrative private trade and smuggling, which made him a fortune. After his death in 1764, his huge collection of porcelain, Japanese lacquer, exotica, oriental furniture, and numismatics, books, and 481 Dutch master paintings, including Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Rubens and many other masters. The sale included about 750 lots of porcelain, in total over 4000 pieces, while he had given his three surviving children already a fair share of his porcelain collection. It is no wonder that Sichterman, who could design his own coat-of-arms as a nouveau riche, chose the ever-acorn-collecting squirrel to adorn his shield.
Part of the China collection.
Related objects
A pink, yellow and green enamelled porcelain VOC plate
Executed in rose-pink, yellow, and soft blue-green enamels, this design follows a silver ducatoon of 1728 in almost every aspect, with even the rim of the plate imitating the ribbed milling of the coin. On a shield is a crowned rampant lion, holding in his left paw a bunch of seven arrows symbolising the seven provinces of the United Netherlands, and in his right paw, a sword is shown supported by two crowned rampant lions. Below the shield is the monogram of the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, above the date 1728, and around it is the heraldic motto of the Dutch Republic CONCORDIA RES PARVAE CRESCUNT (by unity small things grow). The first ducatoon, or zilveren rijder, on which the design of this plate was based, arrived in Canton, China, on the 2nd of August 1729 with the Coxhorn, the first VOC ship to sail straight to Canton and not by way of Batavia. It arrived in Amsterdam in 1730 with the ordered porcelain in this design. This is an early example of the so-called Chine de Commande porcelain. Although the Cantonese artists had a zilveren rijder as an example, they didn’t really understand the design, giving the lions grimacing human faces and cape-like manes. They also didn’t understand the Latin letters, since the R ends truncated, the V is an inverted A, and the E looks more like a Chinese character. The only Chinese porcelain known with this design is a tea set, comprising cup-and-saucers and a theapot. For a cup and saucer, see: Uit Verre Streken, June 2017, no. 49. The Dutch likely took a cup-and-saucer from China to Japan, ordering larger plates like the one present. Until recently, these plates were attributed to Chinese kilns, but they are more likely Japanese. This solves the debate on whether these dishes are modern Chinese forgeries. One has been found in an old Japanese collection and is listed in a catalogue, which makes the latter impossible. The enamel's hues and the porcelain's colour are, indeed, more Japanese than Chinese.
A Japanese Ko-imari porcelain 'VOC' dish
Arita, Edo period, first half 19th century Decorated in blue and iron-red under glaze with in the center the VOC monogram in gold. The bottom with imitation Chinese Ming Dynasty Chenghua marks, 'Great Ming Chenghua period mark'. Diam. 21.2 cm Dishes like the one present were very expensive souvenirs for wealthy Japanese domestic tourists who visited Nagasaki to get a glimpse of the Dutch on Deshima. The design of this particular dish is unknown, and it is possibly unique.
