CIRCA 1726, BLUE AR MARK, ENAMELLED INVENTORY NUMBERS I.A.48. IN DARK RED AND P.E.1526. IN RED

The form and powdered-blue-ground of the present vase derive from Chinese porcelain prototypes of the Kangxi period produced at Jingdezhen. The decoration within the cartouches is typical of the factory style conceived by the head of the decorating workshop, Johann Gregorius Höroldt, and the main scene on the vase is taken from plate 77 of his sketchbook, known as the Schulz Codex. The smaller cartouche of figures before a tree uses figures from two similar scenes on sheets 41 and 42 from the Schulz Codex. The kneeling figure on the central band appears to be adapted from a figure on the same sheet. Höroldt commissioned a model for a copper press to produce a compendium of his drawings, mostly of chinoiserie figures, for his pupils to copy in August 1726. Coincidentally, a trumpet-shaped beaker vase with the same decorative scheme as the present example, also from the Dresden Porzellansammlung, is one of the few surviving pieces fully signed by Höroldt and is dated '17. Augusti 1726'. The Dresden example has similar, if somewhat more elaborate, figurative gilding; see Ingelore Menzhausen, Early Meissen Porcelain in Dresden, Berlin, 1990, pls. 50 and 51, p. 17. The Dr. Fritz Mannheimer collection in the Rijksmuseum includes two pairs of 'Augustus Rex' beaker vases with powdered-blue grounds and chinoiserie decoration, the taller pair with cartouches of lone figures associated with Stadler, and a smaller pair decorated in Höroldt's style with figures and panels of pagodas and pavilions after Petrus Schenk; see Abraham L. den Blaauwen, Meissen porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2000, pp. 71 and 84-5, nos. 35 and 43.