Copeland 'Cashmere' Exhibition Quality Porcelain Cabinet Plate c.1875
Diam: 24cm
Richly decorated in 22ct gilding and bright polychrome enamels all the ancient Indo-Iranian style.
With Copeland mark to reverse.
It is rare to see Copeland 'Cashmere' pattern pieces, one would expect to see the piece bearing the name of the British porcelain manufacturer Coalport.
Coalport first exhibited the 'Cashmere' pattern at the Paris Exhibition 1878 where the Maharajah of Jaipur ordered a complete 'Cashmere' dinner service.
The Cashmere pattern were directly influenced by imports of Post–Mughal Empire designs from India, especially in the form of Kashmir shawls. With swirling, intricate and powerful motif, Copeland and Coalport recognised the potential in replicating these designs to decorate porcelain.
Owen Jones, wrote of the same Indian Kashmere shawls in Grammar of Ornament (1856) that for an attractive display, it was important that:
“Each ornament should be softly and not harshly defined, that coloured objects viewed at a distance should present a neutralized bloom, that nearer approach should exhibit the beautiful details, and that a close inspection should divulge the means whereby these effects are produced. In this, the Indian carries out the same principle of surface decoration that we find in the architecture of the Arabs and Moors. The ornament in the spandrel of a Moorish arch and in an Indian shawl are constructed on precisely the same principles.”