The history of the Herend company's Rothschild Bird pattern is said to be that it tells the story of the Baroness Rothschild and her lost pearl necklace. According to the story circulated among members of the affluent Rothschild family, the baroness lost her necklace one day in the lush garden of her Vienna residence. Several days later, the gardener found lovely little birds playing with the precious necklace in a tree. This unusual family anecdote became the inspiration for the twelve different motifs in the Rothschild Bird pieces, a collection intentionally created for the Rothschilds.

This diverse pattern constitutes of 12 different couple of birds, and it’s the nature lovers’ favourite pattern. The painted birds symbolize relationships, love and the two sexes finding each other. The couples of birds and the colourful butterflies and little bugs scattered around them create a real nature-like environment. Welsh princess Lady Diana also choose the bird-patterned porcelain for her wedding reception.

 When I was commissioned to make this fabulous set I had never heard of the Rothschild bird pattern.  I learned a lot about this pattern.  It is still being made in slightly different renditions.  Having done a much smaller set with birds a long time ago I didn't want to try and match hand drawn birds in such a detailed design over so many pieces so....
The process:

1. I took photos of the original plates (see the photo with the plate to the left) I traced the basic outline of the designs then sized them to fit the various pieces of china.
2. The outlines were transferred to the various pieces of china.
3.  Each piece was meticulously hand painted using china paints with multiple firings shading the various areas and applying multiple colors on each of the birds to get as close as possible to the original paintings.  Outlining all of the little bug wings to make them stand out and finally finishing off with a highlighting using burnished gold.

The original Herend Rothschild bird china set included 12 designs.  For this set I did 6 of those designs.  Several of the designs were very similar and it didn't seem to make sense to do two designs with so much similarity so I chose the six designs you see in the photo.  These are the completed miniature plates one of each of the six designs.  You can see all the pieces close up if you go to the shop.  If do the search on Pattern for Rothschild Bird you will see all of the pieces I have done for this commissioned set.  Any of the pieces can be ordered in any of the six designs shown here.