92. A Meissen plate from the Sulkowski service, circa 1735 Painted with two shaped escutcheons with the arms of Sulkowski and Stain zu Jettingen, flanked by rampant lion supports standing on a stepped plinth above a puce panel with gilt scrolls, the arms of Sulkowski with the sash and badge of the Order of the White Eagle, the well of the plate with scattered indianische Blumen within a Sulkowski Ozier moulded border, 23.6cm, crossed swords mark in underglaze-blue, impressed Dreher's mark, The Sulkowski Service was the Meissen manufactory's first magnificent and large, privately commissioned armorial service to have been designed to order, preceding the more famous Swan Service by several years and was the first that was not intended for the Elector. Alexander Joseph Graf von Sulkowski (1695-1762) was born into a prominent Polish noble family and entered royal service as a page at the Warsaw court. From 1711, he was raised in the household of the Electoral Prince Friedrich Augustus, the heir of Augustus the Strong, of whom he became a close friend. He became a Gentleman of the Bedchamber in 1726, was raised to a (Polish) count in 1732 and, following the accession of Friedrich Augustus in 1733, was made Privy Councillor, Minister of State, Cabinet Minister, and an Imperial Count. Sulkowski also was the recipient of numerous gifts and orders from both Augustus the Strong and his successor, Friedrich Augustus, including Schloß Übigau and the Flemmingsche Palais in Dresden, as well as the Polish Order of the White Eagle and the Order of St. Heinrich. Sulkowski's first marriage in 1728 was to a Lady-in-Waiting of the Electoral Princess, Maria Anna Franziska Catharina Freifrau von Stein zu Jettingen (1712-41), whose arms appear on the service together with those of her husband. The first explicit mention of the service in Kaendler's work notes (Arbeitsberichte) appears to be the large sugar box and cover "belonging to the order of His Excellency the Count Von Solkofsky (sic)" in September 1735. The manufactory inspector reported in May 1736 that although Kaendler, as well as the best Formers and Cleaners had worked on the service for a year and a half, it was not going to be possible to finish everything as Count Brühl had ordered a new service of "entirely new design" and the store rooms urgently needed tablewares, small animals, figures, and birds for sale (quoted in Ingelore Menzhausen, In Porzellan verzaubert, 1993, p.189). Larger forms of the service seem to have been based, at least in part, on silver examples in the Dresden Residence: according to Fritz Fichtner, Meißner Porzellan für Polen und Rußland, 1941 (p.15), Sulkowski himself specified that the large tureens be copies of a silver tureen by the Augsburg goldsmith Johann Miller (or Biller, according to Dr. R. Rückert and P. Schnyder von Wartensee). The basket-moulded borders, now known as "Sulkowsky-Ozier," seem to have been used from around 1732. The Sulkowski Service was the subject of one of the very earliest scholarly monographs on Meissen porcelain, when it was published by Julius Lessing in 1888 ("Das Porzellangeschirr Sulkowski" in Kunstgewerbeblatt, vol.4 (1888): 43-48). Much of the service was apparently sold shortly afterwards, though a substantial portion was preserved in the family home until it was sold by Sotheby's London ("The Property of a Lady of Title") on 23rd May 1967, lots 29-50.