A Very Rare Chinese Export Famille-Rose Jewish Armorial Chamfered Rectangular Platter, Qing Dynasty, Qianlong Period, Circa 1761 | 清乾隆 約1761年 粉彩紋章圖盤

For the arms, see David Sanctuary Howard, Chinese Armorial Porcelain, Vol. I, London, 1974, p. 551, Q4. A smaller example from the same service sold in these rooms, October 14th, 1993, lot 185.

Biographical note: Catarina (Catherine) Mendes da Costa (1679–1756) and the Mendes da Costa family

A leading Sephardi family of Portuguese converso origin, the Mendes da Costas were established in London by the mid‑seventeenth century and were closely associated with the Portuguese synagogue at Bevis Marks. The family’s rising status is marked by Jacob (Álvaro) da Costa’s purchase of Cromwell House, Highgate, in 1675—often cited as the first major London property owned openly by Jews after the medieval expulsion. Members of the clan were active in finance, overseas trade, and learned society life; Emanuel Mendes da Costa later served as clerk and keeper at the Royal Society.

Dr. Fernando Mendes—a royal physician who attended Queen Catherine of Braganza and King Charles II—settled in London with his family. His daughter Catarina (Catherine) Rachel Mendes (1679–1756) married her cousin Moses (Anthony) Mendes da Costa (d. 1747), a prominent merchant‑banker. In 1727 Moses successfully compelled the Russia Company to admit him after it sought to bar him on account of his being Jewish, an early test case for Jewish civic inclusion in Georgian England. The family intermarried with other leading Sephardi houses; a daughter, Sarah (Simha), married Ephraim Lópes Pereira d’Aguilar, later 2nd Baron d’Aguilar. Catherine trained in miniature painting with Bernard Lens III and is the first known female Jewish painter and among the earliest known Anglo‑Jewish artists.

The present plate bears the Mendes da Costa arms (six rib bones—“Costa” meaning rib/side) and a monogram deciphered as JCMDC, firmly linking it to the family. The identity of the original commissioner, however, remains open. Some writers have attributed commissions of related Chinese‑export armorial porcelain to Catherine Mendes da Costa, while others have proposed João or Abraão Mendes da Costa (d. 1763) as a plausible commissioner within the same extended family. A further possibility, reflected in some readings of the monogram as “HMDC,” points to Hananel Mendes da Costa, active in mid‑eighteenth‑century London. The balance of current opinion acknowledges the commission as Mendes da Costa family patronage, with Catherine a distinct possibility but not a certainty. Together, the arms, monogram, and documentary history situate this service within one of Georgian London’s most prominent Sephardi families, whose members were active in court medicine, commerce, civic life, and the arts.

Literature

Roberto Bachmann, “Chinese Porcelain Ordered by Portuguese Jews in the Diaspora,” in Claude B. Stuczynski and Bruno Feitler ed., Portuguese Jews, New Christians, and ‘New Jews’: A Tribute to Roberto Bachmann (Leiden and Boston, 2018), 473–488.

Nuno de Castro, A Porcelana Chinesa ao Tempo do Império – Portugal/Brasil (Lisbon, 2007), 138.

Pedro Dias, Heráldica Portuguesa na Porcelana da China Qing (Lisbon, 2014), 330–331.

Henry Lew, Smitten by Catherine (Hybrid Publishers, 2016).

Alfred Rubens, “Early Anglo-Jewish Artists,” Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England), 14 (1935–39), 91–129.

Idem, “Francis Town of Bond Street (1738-1826) and his family: With Further Notes on Early Anglo-Jewish Artists,” Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England) 18 (1953–55), 89–111.