Sebastian Kuhn
Department Director
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Lot 129
A very rare Meissen 'Chinoiserie War-Chess' set, late 18th century
3 December 2020, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond StreetSold for £37,750 inc. premium
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Nette Megens
Head of Department, Director
Sophie von der Goltz
Head of Sale
A very rare Meissen 'Chinoiserie War-Chess' set, late 18th century
Comprising 16 white and 16 polychrome pieces painted in shades of purple and in flesh tones, including a general flanked by two mandarins, elephants with high houdas, horses and chariots, the front rank with five soldiers flanked by two cannons, the general: 8cm high (some restoration, one cannon a made-up replacement) (32)
Footnotes
Provenance:
The Property of the late the Hon. Mrs Nellie Ionides, Buxted Park (sold by order of the Executors), Sotheby's London, 7 July 1964, lot 132
The rules of the Chinoiserie 'Kriegsspiel' [war-chess] were partly based on the rules of chess and varied in different ways at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. See H. Krieger, Meissener Schachfiguren. Anmerkungen zu ihrer Geschichte, in Ein Königliches Vergnügen Meissener Schachfiguren aus drei Jahrhunderten, Meissener Manuskripte, Sonderheft VI (1998), p. 16). A complete cased set with different decoration, formerly in the pre-War collection of Dr. Fritz Clemm, Berlin, and now in the Ludwig Collection, Bamberg, is illustrated by Krieger, p. 14, and in R. Hanemann (pub.), Goldchinesen und Indianischen Blumen (2010), no. 82, in which it is noted that the Chinoiserie War-Chess game was closer to an Indian version of chess rather than the European game. Unlike the set in the Ludwig Collection, which includes nine soldiers (known in Chinese chess as "Ping"), the present lot has five, which corresponds to the Chinese version of the game. Unlike the European game, the figures were placed at the intersections of the lines rather than within each square and the moves were different.