An extremely rare Chelsea Porcelain ‘Hans Sloane’ Dessert Plate, with lobed rim, beautifully decorated with a large spray of flowering Faba or Broad Beans, together with scattered beans, further Faba flowers and sprays of other colourful vegetable leaves. Two butterflies and a ladybird fly about the specimens. Within a chocolate brown line rim.

The plate Vicia Faba is known to the English as the Broad Bean and has been cultivated here since Roman times. This very spray is illustrated in Joseph Miller’s Plantarum Officinalium. Joseph Weinmann also illustrated a flowering spray of Broad Bean in his ‘Phytanthoza Iconographica, vol. 2, N. 500. Either of these depictions will have been the source of inspiration for this incredibly beautiful plate. Pehr Kalm, the Swedish botanist wrote when in London and visited Chelsea village in 1748, ‘The beans were all of a kind which are called Broad Winsor Beans and they are now in flower everywhere.’ He wrote this in May.

Marks:  Red Anchor Mark