26 with four onion-like melons on the grounds that variants of the Blue Onion Pattern were already being produced at Meissen before 1735. The following two figures show very early variants of the Blue Onion Pattern that originated between 1730 and 1735. The long-handled saucepan in fig. 5 features only the central motif, while the ledge of the plate in fig. 6 depicts two alternating types of fruit. The two objects also differ in their border decoration (figs. 5 and 6). Ulrich Pietsch, then Director of the Dresden Porcelain Collection, stated during the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory’s tercentenary celebrations in 2010 that “no piece with this pattern was ever admitted to the royal collection in the Japanese Palace in Dresden [...]”. Hence, the Augustean collections did not contain any porcelains decorated with the Blue Onion Pattern from either East Asia or Meissen. He even described the Blue Onion Pattern as one of the “patterns that are believed to be copies of Chinese and Japanese prototypes.” This applied “also to the famous Blue Onion Pattern, which has no Chinese antecedent and, instead, was copied by the Chinese after a Meissen design and only then exported to Europe.” He designated the Meissen Blue Onion Pattern as being “a genuine invention of the Meissen Manufactory”.9 5 Long-handled saucepan H. 3.37" (8.5 cm), decorated in underglaze blue, crossedswords mark in underglaze blue and blue-painter’s cipher “two dots” on unglazed foot-rim, thrower’s/moulder’s cipher “X” on foot-rim for Johann Daniel Rehschuh, Meissen, c. 1735, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Porcelain Collection, inv. no. P. E. 2294. shown in: Exh. cat. Dresden/Hamburg 1989, p. 235. Prov.: Spitzner Coll., purchased 1890.
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