In 1734 the directors of Holland’s VOC commissioned Amsterdam artist Cornelis Pronk (1691-1759) to create four patterns for Chinese porcelain. Pronk’s drawings were sent to VOC headquarters in Batavia (later Java) and then on to Canton in 1736; two survive today in the Rijksmuseum. With a Chinoiserie vocabulary Pronk created distinctive scenes and motifs that were then produced by the Chinese workshops in differing quantities of famille rose enamels, blue and white and ‘Chinese Imari’.

The second Pronk pattern is known as ‘The Doctors’, or 'The Doctors Visit to the Emperor'. A number of dinner services and tea sets were sent to the Netherlands in 1741 in this pattern, but it is the rarest to find today.