This dish with a pierced border features the coat of arms of the Honourable East India Company which bears the motto 'Auspicio regis et senatus Angliae' ('By right of the king and the senate of England'). This coat of arms was adopted for use by the Company in 1709. The Honourable East India Company (known officially as 'United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies') was formed in 1708 after the merger of the first English East India Company (incorporated by royal charter in 1600) with a rival East India Company (established in 1698). The EIC was a monopolistic trading body, originally formed for the pursuit of trade with India, East Asia and Southeast Asia. According to David Sanctuary Howard (1928 - 2005), author of 'Chinese armorial porcelain' (1974), this dish was part of a service that was ordered for use by East India Company officers in Bombay and Madras, possibly to celebrate the bi-centenary of the 'new' East India Company or of the merger of the two Companies a decade later. Dishes of a similar design were recovered from The Diana, a merchant ship of the Honourable East India Company trading between Canton and India, and which had wrecked in the Malacca Strait on 4 March 1817.
