A RARE PAIR OF 'CANTON ENAMEL' WALL SCONCES

18TH CENTURY

Details

A RARE PAIR OF 'CANTON ENAMEL' WALL SCONCES
18th century
Each with an oval scene of a goddess standing on clouds in a garden holding a fly whisk, her maidservant pouring out a small vision of the goddess from a double-gourd vase and a small boy with a basket of roses at her side, all beneath a shell-form cornice striped with floral panels and mounted with a colorful animal mask, the shaped sides painted with lilies and all applied above and below with enamel floral sprigs, a pair of gilt-bronze candle arms rising from a shell at the base
16½in. (41.9cm.) high (2)

Lot Essay

This form is known in a very small number of porcelain examples probably designed by Cornelis Pronk for the private Dutch trade, one pattern decorated with phoenixes and the other with Chinese ladies. The V.O.C. archives refer to an order of "...tapestry sconces...according to the wooden moulds" (see C.J.A. Jorg, op. cit., p. 36). Single porcelain sconces were sold Sotheby's New York, 30 January 1985, lot 186, from the Mottahedeh collection, and Sotheby's Monaco, 5 March 1989, lot 450. A pair of porcelain sconces from the collection of a Philadelphia estate were sold Christie's New York, 14 October 1999, lot 39

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