Rare WALTER BAKER COMPANY Vienna Art Tin Advertising Plate. C 1905

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Rare WALTER BAKER COMPANY Vienna Art Tin Advertising Plate. C 1905:
$250.00

Very Rare 10\" Vienna Art advertising plate. From an outstanding collection of Vienna plates. Advertises for the Walter Baker Co. Ltd.. This company is the oldest producer of chocolate in the United States.
CONDITION: Gold has mellowed a bit, but border decoration is beautiful with no chips or loss. Very light craqueleure on inner plate with some scraping/loss in right side and lower right (as seen in photos). Rim has tiny barely noticeable chips. Back has nice patina.
Some background on the woman portrayed on the plate. (From Wikipedia: Walter Baker & Company published the story in Choice Recipes, 1913, as follows:\"...There is a romance connected with the charming Viennese girl who served as the model, which is well worth telling. One of the leading journals of Vienna has thrown some light an the Baltauf, or Baldauf, family to which the subject of Liotard\'s painting belonged. Anna, or Annerl, as she was called by friends and relatives, was the daughter of Melchior Baltauf, a knight, who was living in Vienna in 1760, when Liotard was in that city making portraits of some members of the Austrian Court. It is not clear whether Anna was earning her living as a chocolate bearer at that time or whether she posed as a society belle in that becoming costume; but, be that as it may, her beauty won the love of a prince of the Empire, whose name, Dietrichstein, is known now only because he married the charming girl who was immortalized by a great artist. The marriage caused a great deal of talk in Austrian society at the time, and many different stories have been told about it. The prejudices of caste have always been very strong in Vienna, and a daughter of a knight, even if well-to-do, was not considered a suitable match for a member of the court. It is said that an the wedding day Anna invited the chocolate bearers with whom she had worked or played, and in \"sportive joy at her own elevation\" offered her hand to them saying, \" Behold! now that I am a princess you may kiss my hand.\" She was probably about twenty years of age when the portrait was painted in 1760, and she lived until 1825.\")