Cheese Keeper, 8.625 x 8.625 x 6.625 inches. Brown transfer with polychrome clobbering and gilding. Impressed maker's mark for Franz Anton Mehlem of the Royal Bonn Pottery in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Painted pattern number of 06'2422. This pattern features a tightly packed circular cartouche of flowers overlaid with branches of vibrant, graceful blossoms -- perhaps plum blossoms. The style and arrangement of the design elements suggest production in the last half of the 19th century, during the Aesthetic Movement.

Royal Bonn was the nineteenth-and twentieth-century trade name used by Franz Anton Mehlem, who had a pottery in Bonn, Germany, from 1836 to 1931. The manufactory produced high quality works of both porcelain and earthenware, which soon became popular among the elite European aristocracy. Royal Bonn used a monogram-and-tower mark that appeared on exported pottery only with Germany added. The factory was purchased by Villeroy & Boch in 1921 and closed in 1931.