D2339. Blue and White Oval Herring Dishes

Each painted in the center with a scaly herring within a border of leaves and scrolls on the scalloped and barbed edge of the oval rim.

DIMENSIONS
Lengths: 27.6 cm. (10.9 in.)

NOTE
According to the Dutch poet Jacob Westerbaen, the best way to eat herring was with onions, bread, butter and beer from Haarlem, Delft or Breda. Given the popularity of this Dutch delicacy, herring dishes became a very typical object of the Dutch kitchen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Various types of dishes especially conceived for its tasting were produced. They were sometimes modeled as a fish, an oval, or a rectangular shape with the depiction of a herring in the center.

SIMILAR EXAMPLES
A single herring dish with similar border decoration and marked for De Porceleyne Byl factory is illustrated in Aronson 2007, p. 72, no. 54 and another pair in Aronson 2019, pp. 144-145, no. 73. Another similarly bordered De Porceleyne Byl herring dish is illustrated by Van Dam 2004, p. 185, fig. 133.