Brilliantly enamelled in the Japanese Kakiemon style, with two parrots, the feathers well delineated in turquoise, red and yellow enamels, the feathers partly outlined in black and gilt; one bird is perched on a budding rose tree and the other on a stump, pecking at a cherry held in its claws, further clumps of flowers at the bases of the stumps, the rim with a continuous tendril scroll in green interspersed with iron-red and gilt flowerheads.
Literature
For a similar example, but not on a carved and incised ground, see the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, museum number 680-1907, Gulland Gift. This one plate was exhibited at the Porcelain for Palaces Exhibition at the Museum in 1990, for which see, 'Porcelain for Palaces; The fashion for Japan in Europe', by John Ayers et al, OCS, London 1990, plate 265, page 242, where the authors point out that the design is identical with that on a Delft bird cage figured by H. Harvard 1878, plate 153. These plates, therefore, were perhaps decorated at the workshop of Gerrit van de Kaade. See 'The Delft Enamellers', by W.W. Winkworth, Burlington Magazine LII June 1928, plate 302 (although Prof. Jorg points out that the van de Kaade shop was a retail outlet only and therefore the enamelling would not have taken place in this shop).
