拍品專文
The technique and style of the elegant deeply cut design on the lid and foot of this incense burner recall the work on two pieces in the Topkapi Palace Museum. One is the lid of an incense burner, the bowl of which is late Ming Chinese porcelain, the lid of which was fashioned from silver in Ottoman Turkey in the second half of the 17th century. The other is a similarly dated silver gilt clock (The Anatolian Civilisations, exhibition catalogue, vol. III, nos. E.271 and E.270, pp.265-266). That example is said to have been made by European craftsmen inspired by Ottoman motifs. It is a style however that continued in Turkey until the mid 18th century and came to be predominant in fine metalwork of other forms (Topkapi à Versailles, Trésors de la Cour ottomane, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1999, no. 228, p. 261). The European taste of the palmettes and the swags issuing from them on the present incense burner may be a reflection of the source from which the style developed.