Botanical pineapple plate 18th century Chinese porcelain

A Chinese porcelain circular plate decorated in blue underglaze with a rare representation of a pineapple and fruit branches.
18th century, QIANLONG period (1736-1795)

The decoration is based on an engraving from Pierre Pomet's ‘Histoire générale des drogues’ (published in French after 1694 and in London in 1712 under the title ‘a compleat history of druggs’).
Pierre Pomet was King Louis XIV's chief pharmacist.
A lover of pineapples, Louis XIV succeeded in acclimatising them in his greenhouses at Choisy-Le-Roi.
Suzanne Findlen Hood listed several of these plates in colonial houses in Virginia. She reports orders through the VOC (Dutch East India Company) executed between 1750 and 1769.
Hood references 2017, p234-235

A similar plate from the Chinese Porcelain Company in New York was sold at Christie's London on 15 November 2000 (lot 311).