Sebastian Kuhn
Department Director
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Lot 38
A very rare pair of large Höchst faience models of parrots, circa 1750-52
3 December 2020, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£40,000 - £60,000
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Nette Megens
Head of Department, Director
Sophie von der Goltz
Head of Sale
A very rare pair of large Höchst faience models of parrots, circa 1750-52
Modelled by Johann Gottfried Becker, decorated by Johannes Zeschinger, one signed, each seated on an elaborately pierced tree stump base decorated with applied leaves and foliage, the birds with exotic polychrome colours, 36.8cm and 38.4cm, the green bird with factory mark of a wheel and 'Zeschinger' in puce, the puce bird with quartered O and IE in blue (restoration to one tail and around the edge of each base) (2)
Footnotes
Similar models of parrots are in Schloss Favorite, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and formerly in the Pflüger Collection, New York; for a comprehensive discussion, see H. Reber, Die Kurmainzische Porzellan-Manufaktur Höchst: Fayencen (1986), figs. 18-32. The author notes that these models are derived from the large-scale porcelain models by J.J. Kaendler. Both Adam Friedrich von Löwenfinck and Johann Gottfried Becker had worked at Meissen and would have been familiar with Kaendler's models, so it is not surprising that animal models, and in particularly large models of parrots, seem to have been one of the preferred models in Höchst faience between 1750-53. According to Reber (pp. 50-51), it is unlikely that the technical feat of producing these models in porcelain was beyond the Höchst manufactory, so it is surprising that the models were not made in porcelain. Johannes Zeschinger was one of the most talented painters at Höchst, where he worked for around seven years between 1746 and 1753, when he moved to Fürstenberg.