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Chelsea Dessert Plate
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Print Details
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Request Details
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Dates
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Circa 1755
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Medium
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Porcelain
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Origin
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England
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Description
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An exceptional Chelsea Hans Sloane dessert plate with a wavy, brown-edged rim, finely painted with a large fig leaf, a green fig, a cut fig, and scattered moths and insects.
Red anchor mark.
22.5cm Dia.
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Condition
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Two small chips restored to the rim.
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Literature
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Sally Kevill-Davies, Sir Hans Sloane’s Plants on Chelsea Porcelain, pp. 122–125, for two other Hans Sloane plates with different versions of the common fig., p. 125: "Because the Carica has long been naturalised in Europe from its origins in south-west Asia, it was brought to the Americas by the Spanish around 1600. It was first planted in California by Franciscan friars in 1770 and is, according to Miller, the only fig whose fruit is valuable. As a generality, the English were not lovers of this fruit, so there were few who bothered themselves with the culture of it."
Fig trees have large leaves with three to five deep lobes. Its fruit (referred to as syconium, a type of multiple fruit) is tear-shaped, with a green skin that may ripen towards purple or brown and sweet, soft, reddish flesh containing numerous crunchy seeds. The milky sap of the green parts is an irritant to human skin. In the Northern Hemisphere, fresh figs are in season from late summer to early autumn. They tolerate moderate seasonal frost and can be grown even in hot-summer continental climates.
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