Thistle Dinner Plate

Discerning hostesses and porcelain enthusiasts have long coveted Anna Weatherley's exquisite hand-painted porcelain tableware featuring butterflies, bugs and botanical images. Anna Weatherley was born in Budapest, Hungary. Her artistic nature was nurtured by an environment filled with beautiful architecture, furniture, marble, ironwork and artwork of her native country. Her father's death during the war left Anna and her mother destitute. They eventually fled communist controlled Hungary for Australia, where Anna studied design and painting. A trip to India resulted in Anna's falling in love with Indian handmade textiles. By the Late 1970's her hand-painted and embroidered chiffon dresses were sold at Saks, Bloomingdales and Nordstroms, as well as privately to Elizabeth Taylor, Lady Bird Johnson, and the late Pamela Harrimon. When the end of the Cold War reopened Budapest, Anna returned to her beloved home city. Her interests had turned to the works of the realistic 16th, 17th and 18th century botanical artists, and in Hungary she found artists talented enough to re-create the highly detailed, realistic style of these Romantic periods. Anna breathed new life into Hungary's two-centuries-old tradition of hand-painted porcelain. Anna's creative vision had again taken top retailers and consumers by storm by the late 1990's. The editor of Vogue commissioned Anna Weatherly cachepots as a gift for England's late Princess Diane. As she ventures into the new century, Anna Weatherley again has ventured into new territory, offering consumers beautiful framed paintings on porcelain: butterflies, flowers and leaves, as well as watercolors on parchment paper. These also have been enthusiastically received by a public which can never seem to get enough of Anna Weatherly. 10 1/2" diam.