Large dish with a flat-based, with shallow well and broad, flat rim with raised gilt edge. The centre painted with luxuriant leafy scrollwork, surrounding a helm above two oval panels designed to contain the conjoined arms. Round the well, remnants of a leafy scroll, and round the rim, two symmetrical sections of a broader scroll with a pair of confronted mythological figures at the top holding leafy fronds, with five putti incorporated in each side.

This lacquer dish is of a shape more commonly seen in European pewter, and was probably commissioned through the VOC rather than directly by an English or Scottish patron. Decorated with CHARLES R.I (for Charles I) and H.M.D.F.E.D.C.I. (for Queen Henrietta Maria), it was almost certainly prepared for a Jacobite sympathiser; Charles II had been in exile in Holland for nine years and the country remained a sanctuary for exiled Jacobites. Comparable examples include those with Dutch coats of arms made for merchants, some of which also combine spouses’ arms or monograms.

This dish is probably that in an invoice submitted by George IV’s confectioner, François Benois, on 15 May 1820, where it is erroneously described as bearing the royal coat of arms of England. It was certainly at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton when the residence’s contents were sent back to London in 1848 following the building’s sale by Queen Victoria. Its acquisition reflects George IV’s interest in his Stuart predecessors.

Text adapted from Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen: Volume III.