32. Très rare plat creux à douze pans en porcelaine de Meissen du service « Gelbe Löwe », circa 1729-31 A very rare Meissen twelve-sided deep dish from the 'Gelbe Löwe' Service, circa 1729-31 The porcelain with very rare moulded flower heads visible in four places, largely covered by the enamel colours, Painted with the 'Gelber Löwe' pattern, on the right a stylised prunus trunk with young shoot sprouting from the gnarly base, on the left a yellow tiger, his large eye picked out in gold, wrapping itself around a bamboo shoot with blue, green and red flowers, 25cm across crossed swords mark in blue enamel, incised Japanese Palace inventory number N=8-/ W very minute chip to top corner, slight wear Provenance: The Royal Collections of Saxony, Japanese Palace, Dresden, delivered in April 1731; Albert Dasch Collection, Teplitz (sold by Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus, Berlin, 4 March 1913, lot 186); With J.J. Klejman Gallery, New York (applied label to reverse) For a comprehensive discussion of the history of the 'Gelber Löwe' service in the 18th century, see Julia Weber, Meißener Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern, vol. II (2013), pp. 265-274. The 'Gelber Löwe' pattern was first produced at Meissen after a Japanese porcelain original as part of the large order placed by the Paris merchant, Rudolph Lemaire, for copies of Asian porcelain. A large quantity of plates and dishes painted in this style were among the porcelain confiscated in April 1731 in the house of Lemaire's accomplice at the Dresden court, Count von Hoym, and subsequently sent to the Japanese Palace and entered in the inventory under no. 8. This present lot belongs to this group and is therefore one of the earliest examples of this decoration. Some of this porcelain was used for diplomatic gifts - to the English diplomat, Sir Thomas Robinson and the Bishop of Cracow, Jan Alexander Lipski - or was used for table services (for which large orders were subsequently placed) and moved to the court pantries (Hofkonditoreri) in Dresden and Warsaw. The 18th century inventories of the court pantries show that ten twelve-sided "tiefe Confect Schaalen 10 Zoll in Diam" [deep confectionary dishes 10 Zoll in diam.] with the inventory number 8 were removed from the Japanese Palace for use: five in Dresden and five in Warsaw (published by C. Boltz, Hoym, Lemaire und Meissen - Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Dresdener Porzellansammlung, in Keramos 88 (1980), p. 71, and by J. Weber, op. cit., I, p. 159 and p. 163). By 1770, it appears that only sixty dishes of various shapes and sizes remained in the Japanese Palace: the 1770 inventory records: "(Siebenzig) Nur 60. Stück Stück runde tiefe Schaalen, von differenter Größe, mit braunen Rändern, Löwen, blauen Rohr und andren Blumen nach alt Indianischer Art gemahlt, No. 8" [(Seventy) only 60 round deep bowls, of different sizes, painted with brown rims, lions, blue pipe and other flowers in old Indian style, No. 8] (quoted by Claus Boltz, Japanisches Palais-Inventar 1770 und Turmzimmer-Inventar 1769, in Keramos 153 (1996), p. 72). This appears to be the only twelve-sided dish of this type recorded in the literature (Weber, op. cit., II, p. 265 and n. 8).