Sebastian Kuhn
Department Director
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Lot 57
A very rare Meissen underglaze-blue-ground beaker and saucer, circa 1722-23
3 December 2020, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond StreetSold for £62,750 inc. premium
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Nette Megens
Head of Department, Director
Sophie von der Goltz
Head of Sale
A very rare Meissen underglaze-blue-ground beaker and saucer, circa 1722-23
Each side reserved with a figural scene depicting a lady in a feathered headdress and elegant robes and a man with a bow and quiver, a remote landscape in the distance, within a shaped gilt quatrelobe cartouche edged with gilt and brown scrollwork, the saucer with a chinoiserie scene of a man drinking tea within a gilt and underglaze-blue cartouche edged with shaded iron-red scrollwork, the reverse of the rim with an underglaze-blue ground, gilt-edged rims, the beaker: 7.7cm high; the saucer: 12.8cm diam. (minor rubbing to cartouches on beaker) (2)
Footnotes
Provenance:
William W. Blackburn Collection, New York (by 1957);
Private Collection, Switzerland;
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2007
Literature:
W.W. Blackburn, The length of J.G. Herold's career as an artist, and other notes, in Mitteilungsblatt der Keramikfreunde der Schweiz 39 (1957), p. 35, fig. 38 (the beaker illustrated);
U. Pietsch/C. Banz (eds.), Triumph der blauen Schwerter (2010), cat. no. 46;
C. Bodinek, Raffinesse im Akkord. Meissener Porzellanmalerei und ihre grafischen Vorlagen, II (2018), ill. 43a
Exhibited:
Dresden, Japanese Palace, 'Triumph der blauen Schwerter: Meissener Porzellan für Adel und Bürgertum', 8 May-29 August 2010
The figure with bow and quiver on the beaker is based on the figure of 'Sumatra' in a card game, jeu de la Géographie, that was commissioned from Stefano della Bella by Cardinal Mazarin for the young Louis XIV (see Bodinek, p. 56 and ill. 43). The female figure on the reverse seems to come from the same series and may be after 'Arabie Troglodytique'.
Only three other beakers and saucers from this service are recorded in the literature, of which all are now in museum collections: a beaker and saucer is in the Wark Collection (U. Pietsch, Early Meissen Porcelain (2011), no. 110); another beaker and saucer is in the Warda Stevens Stout collection in Memphis (C. Nelson/L. Roberts, A History of Eighteenth-Century German Porcelain (2013), cat. no. 19); a third beaker and saucer was sold at the Ernst Museum, Budapest, 21 February 1921ff., lot 904 and was subsequently in the Baron von Born collection in Budapest (sold at Rudolph Lepke's, Berlin, 4 December 1929, lot 111), of which the beaker alone is now in the Kocher Collection, Historisches Museum, Bern, published by A. d'Agliano/E. Jezler-Hübner, Edles Gedeck Frühes Meissener Porzellan aus der Sammlung Kocher (2003), no. 5.