Here we have an exceptional-quality Dutch-decorated Kakiemon-style plate. What you see is a Chinese porcelain dish that was exported undecorated to the Netherlands and subsequently painted in the Japanese Kakiemon style, which became highly successful around 1720.

This is a very beautiful example of this type of Dutch decoration, possibly executed in Amsterdam or Delft.

A fascinating example of Amsterdam Bont, decorated in the Netherlands in the fashionable Japanese Kakiemon style.

During the early 18th century, Japanese Kakiemon porcelain was among the most admired and desirable ceramics in Europe. Dutch decorators responded to this fashion by taking imported Asian porcelain and adding colourful overglaze enamels locally, transforming existing pieces into something new for the European market.

This plate is a wonderful example of that world: an Asian porcelain body, enriched in Holland with a distinctly Japanese-inspired palette and decoration.

What makes pieces like this particularly interesting is the wider story behind them. Around the same period, the Paris dealer Rodolphe Lemaire even sent undecorated Meissen porcelain to Holland to have it painted in Japanese style, to then sell them in Paris as Japanese originals

Amsterdam was therefore not simply a marketplace for Asian porcelain, but also an important centre where Chinese, Japanese and European ceramic traditions met and were reinvented.

A decorative object, but also a small piece of the story of how the European fascination with “Old Japan” helped shape the development of porcelain in the West.

References:
Oliver Impey, Christiaan J.A. Jörg and Charles Mason, Dragons, Tigers and Bamboo: Japanese Porcelain and Its Impact in Europe. The Macdonald Collection (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2009).
Helen Espir, European Decoration on Oriental Porcelain, 1700–1830 (London: Jorge Welsh Books, 2005).