Dienblad, beschilderd met chinoiserieën 1760 - 1775

Curator: Oh, isn’t that darling? It feels like a whimsical dreamscape served up on a platter. Editor: Indeed. What you are describing is a painted earthenware tray rendered in tempera from around 1760-1775 by Pasquale Antonibon. Notice how it reflects the fashion for chinoiserie. Curator: Chinoiserie… like, fake China? But it’s kinda cute, not exactly offensive, or is it? The scale of the little figures versus the buildings…it is funny, though! Like dollhouse inhabitants taking over grand monuments. I'm getting echoes of something out of Jonathan Swift. Editor: In truth, this playful asymmetry between elements became fashionable precisely because it echoed Chinese decorative arts—a reimagining and exoticization that spoke of worldliness to European audiences. The palm trees are probably more aspirational than documentary, let’s say. Note the genre-painting motifs nestled within. It provides clues about the function of decoration as visual code. Curator: So it is "encoding" power! It’s not only just fancy houses and some fisherman. Rococo gone global! So what could a scene on this tray mean to someone drinking tea with it three hundred years ago? A sort of day dream about seeing new places? And the slightly odd, washy paint job gives the feeling you can go anywhere from where you sit. Editor: Yes, partly about a "anywhere" perhaps. To me, the real magic here resides in how the iconography has taken root, morphed, been grafted onto other stories and cultural practices. What persists and changes over time—it’s about the survival of forms. The rococo, in all its delightful extravagance, persists as both a historical fact and a source of continuous inspiration and imitation. Curator: True. It still brings the party. The odd scaling doesn’t matter a bit—I could dive in to a sip tea there easily, or set down cakes! A total celebration in tray-form, still serving, three hundred years on.