circular, painted in an Imari palette with a European leaf scroll on the rim. 27.5cm diameter

P.B. Cooke Collection

The collection was started in the 1920s by Phil’s father – who bought at that time from Sir Algernon Tudor-Craig, the eminent London dealer and first author of a book on armorial wares, from his gallery ‘The Century House’ in Knightsbridge, which closed around 1929. Phil continued collecting, buying much from the collector/dealer Cecil Bullivant, and by the 1960s, his collection had become the largest in the world. My late husband first met him in the late ’50s, and his first volume of Chinese Armorial Porcelain illustrates 220 examples from the Cooke Collection.

Angela Howard

Thanks to Angela Howard of Heirloom & Howard Ltd. for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.

The coat is of Chester of Royston and Cockenheath in Hertfordshire, Ermine on a chief sable a griffin passant or. The Chester family came originally from Derbyshire, but the ancestor of this branch came to prominence when Sir Robert Chester was a gentleman of the Privy Chamber to King Henry VIII. Made for Robert Chester, an East India Company director, and also a director and promoter of the South Sea Company. Three similar services were made in the Chinese Imari palette for three SS Co. associates.