A CHINESE ARMORIAL PORCELAIN DISH, YONGZHENG, CIRCA 1723

circular, painted in an Imari palette with objects around the rim, the reverse decorated with four floral sprigs in a Famille Verte palette. 24.5cm diameter

P.B. Cooke Collection

The collection was started in the 1920s by Phil’s father – who bought at that time from Sir Algernon Tudor-Craig, the eminent London dealer and first author of a book on armorial wares, from his gallery ‘The Century House’ in Knightsbridge, which closed around 1929. Phil continued collecting, buying much from the collector/dealer Cecil Bullivant, and by the 1960s, his collection had become the largest in the world. My late husband first met him in the late ’50s, and his first volume of Chinese Armorial Porcelain illustrates 220 examples from the Cooke Collection.

Angela Howard

Thanks to Angela Howard of Heirloom & Howard Ltd. for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.

The arms are those of Pinell impaling Hamlin. Made for Richard Pinell of the East India Company, who died in June 1744. He must have married a Miss Hamlin of the Leicestershire or Buckinghamshire family, which is not closely related to the Hamlyns of Devon (baronets).

No cracks or restoration. Some shallow chips around the rim and some surface wear.