22 The assumption that the first Meissen Blue Onion Pattern was modelled on a Chinese prototype from the Dresden Porcelain Collection was virtually self-perpetuating. The plates from the Dresden Porcelain Collection cited by Berling and Zimmermann were repeatedly proffered as evidence until quite recently. It didn’t seem to matter that these two items did not form part of the older holdings in the Dresden collection and that no Chinese prototype or Meissen Blue Onion Pattern could be found either in Augustus the Strong’s collections or in the inventories (fig. 3 l. and r.). Numerous Meissen Blue Onion Pattern porcelains produced before 1739 were documented in the meantime, triggering a welter of publications and much lively debate on both the genesis and botanical classification of the plants and fruit in this blue-and-white decoration.3 Proceeding from Berling and Zimmermann’s views on the genesis of Meissen’s Blue Onion Pattern in underglaze blue, most authors went on to posit the existence of a founding Meissen motif based on a Chinese prototype in the Dresden collections and that, hence, the pattern had actually originated at an earlier date, in “c. 1730”. Thus, it was argued, the Meissen Blue Onion Pattern we are familiar with today, with two alternating types of fruit on the ledges of plates, came about through a process of simplification and adaptation, though no material proof of this was furnished. 2 Plate D. 11.26" (28.6 cm), decorated in underglaze blue, thought to be from China, c. 1730– 1740, formerly privately owned in Dresden. Reproduced from: Berling 1900, p. 120.
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