Chinese Export Porcelain – Plate, 9" diameter, circa 1750
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The arms are of Roddam quarterly impaling Clinton, and the service bearing them was made for the marriage 1749 of Capt. Robert Roddam (later Admiral) to Lucy Mary Clinton, the daughter of Col. Henry Clinton of New York and the niece of Governor George Clinton.
The Roddam family traces its ancestry to before the year 940; the left (dexter) side of the arms date to 1357 and contain the armorial devices of the Roddam, Espley and Houghton families.
Roddam was a captain in the British Navy stationed at New York and was a prisoner of the French during the Seven Years War, later rising to the rank of Admiral of the Red. His brother, Collingwood, was in the British East India Company and may have ordered the porcelain.
Related works:
David Sanctuary Howard, Chinese Armorial Porcelain, Vol. II, Frome, Somerset, 2003, 387
David Sanctuary Howard, New York and the China Trade, New York, 1984, 67
Ronald W. Fuchs II, Made in China: Export Porcelain from the Leo & Doris Hodroff Collection at Winterthur, University Press of New England, 2005, 72.