A CHINESE EXPORT 'DON QUIXOTE' PLATE circa 1740

painted with Don Quixote in a suit of armor, touching his left hand to a barber's bowl worn as Mambrino's helmet, holding a spear, and seated astride his donkey, Rocinate, led by Sancho Panza, with two curious ladies peering from behind a tree before the frightened Mambrino fleeing in the distance, the cavetto with a gilt chain border, and the rim with four gilt flowering branches within a blossom and foliate-scroll border.

Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge, New York, December 16, 1985

San Francisco, Fall Antiques Show, 1995
London, A Tale of Three Cities, 1997, no. 132

David S. Howard, A Tale of Three Cities: Canton, Shanghai & Hong Kong, pp. 110-111, no. 132

Original 2mm glazed over chip at 6 o'clock on back of rim, stacking wear at right and left sides as seen.
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An identical plate is illustrated by Litzenburg and Bailey, p. 181, no. 177, who note that the original source of the decoration is a cartoon painted around 1714 by Charles-Antoine Coypel (1694-1752) for a suite of tapestries relating to the adventures the famous literary character, Don Quixote, and made by the Gobelins factory near Paris.  "Louis Surugue [de Surgis] (1686-1762) made the first engraving (c. 1723) of the Coypel painting; [and] Jacob Folkema (1692-1733) and Bernard Picart (1673-1733) subsequently adapted this engraving for illustrated editions of Don Quixote [de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), Part I published in 1605 and Part II in 1615].  Closely copying the Folkema engraving of 1741, [this is] the earliest depiction on export ware of Cervantes' story of 'Mambrino's helmet'," from Part I, Chapter XXI.

Another identical plate is illustrated by Hyde, p. 89, pl. XV, fig. 51.  An 11-inch example is illustrated by Le Corbeiller 1973, p. 51, no. 36; and Hervouët and Bruneau, p. 194, no. 9.2 illustrate a 12¾-inch example, as well as another plate similarly decorated but with landscape and bird panels on the rim, p. 195, no. 9.3, which was sold at Sotheby's in Monte Carlo on June 22, 1987, lot 1630; and subsequently was in the collection of Dr. Anton C. R. Dreesmann, sold at Christie's in London on April 10, 2002, lot 451.  Plates of this latter type also are illustrated by Howard 1994, p. 95, no. 85; and Howard and Ayers, Vol. I, p. 345, no. 344.  A teapot with this subject is illustrated by Williamson, pl. XXIV (bottom, left).  A soup plate identically decorated to the present plate was sold at Christie's in New York on January 31, 1998, lot 38.