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RICHARD REDDING ANTIQUES |
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RICHARD REDDING ANTIQUES |
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An extremely fine and beautiful Régence gilt bronze mounted Kangxi famille-verte porcelain covered vase marked with a green artemisia leaf within a double blue ring on the base, the vase with border around the foot and body decorated with peonies, other flowers and foliage on a white ground, with petal shaped panels enclosing scenes of figures beside a walled pavilion above various utensils, the lid also with various scholarly utensils, the foot with a lobed mount and similarly so around the central rim and bearing a later C-couronné poinçon stamp to the inner rim, above flanking strapwork clasps headed by a scallop above foliate handles and cast with female masks and a stylised fleur-de-lis within a strapwork banding, the upper lid joined by a plain mount and surmounted by a pinecone finial The vase: China, Qing Dynasty, late Kangxi period (1662-1722). The gilt bronze mounts: Paris, date circa 1710 Height 36 cm, diameter 26 cm. Literature: Pierre Kjellberg, “Objets Montés du Moyen Age à nos Jours”, 2000, p. 41, illustrating a pair of very similar famille-verte covered vases with very similar enamel decorations and again very similar Régence mounts, featuring bearded male heads instead of female masks. Identical gilt bronze mounts to these can be found on a pair of Kangxi lidded vases (circa 1700-10) now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (no. 72.DI.50), which they date to circa 1710. As here, each of the Getty vases were originally made as lidded jars; these would have been acquired by one of the Parisian merchands-merciers who would have commissioned a craftsman to cut the shoulder to create a larger lid and a bronzier to join it to the small original lid. The latter would also have added the gadrooned moulding and the elaborate gilt bronze handles to the vessel. Mounting of Oriental porcelain, which had been practised since the fifteenth century reached its zenith during the mid eighteenth, when merchands-merciers such as Lazare Duvaux and Thomas-Joachim Hébert, catered to the inexhaustible demand for such porcelains from collectors who considered the mounts not only enhanced but also emphasised the exotic character of the brightly coloured porcelain. The Berainesque strapwork mounts relate closely to the later oeuvre of André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732), in particular to one of his designs for a wall-light and the backplate of a three-branch wall-light attributed to him in the Musée du Louvre (illustrated in Hans Ottomeyer and Peter Pröschel, “Vergoldete Bronzen”, 1986, p. 61, pl. 1.9.4 and 1.9.5). Boulle’s design as well as the wall-light includes a similar symmetrical layout and a quadrangular motif, while the wall-lights also include a similar crowned female mask and scallop. The mounts can also be compared with those in silver on a Japanese Imari lidded bowl in the Toledo Museum of Art, which are struck with a Paris discharge mark for 1717-22 (see F.J.B. Watson, “Mounted Oriental Porcelain”, exhibition catalogue, Washington, 1986, p. 56-57, no. 14). The mounts, which can be dated to circa 1710, are also struck around the inner rim with a C-couronné poinçon. This was proof of a tax payment imposed between March 1745 and February 1749 and thus in this instance indicate that the object was at that time owned by a marchand or dealer. Famille-verte porcelain was developed during the reign of Emperor Kangxi and took its name from the variety of clear greens that characterise its style. It replaced the earlier Ming five-colour scheme and was later superseded by the famille-rose. The almost pure white porcelain body was decorated with enamelled iron-red, manganese-purple and antimony-yellow, finished with a thin glassy green overglaze enamel. As here the work was often decorated with petal or leaf-shaped reserves enclosing various themes from mountainous landscapes, pavilions, mythical beasts, figures, flowers, birds and precious objects. |