Lot Essay
This table with its delicate chinoiserie decoration featuring Berainesque strapwork detail and with distinctive figural gilt-lead mounts can be firmly attributed to the celebrated Dresden lacquer painter Martin Schnell (d.circa 1740) based on two closely related examples supplied to the Hollndische Palais for Elector Augustus the Strong (d.1733).
Augustus the Strong's fascination with the Orient is well-documented and is boldly demonstrated in the architecture and furnishing of the Hollndishe (later Japanische) Palais and the Pillnitz Wasser- and Bergpalais, both in Dresden. Martin Schnell, who had worked under the reknown lacquer artist Gerard Dagly in Berlin, was appointed court lacquer-master in 1710, establishing a workshop that provided decoration for furniture as well as Meissen porcelain. There was not a sufficient quantity of lacquer furniture to furnish both palaces, however, and the prime importance of these lacquer pieces is demonstrated in the transfer of select examples from the Hollndishe Palais to Pillnitz for special occasions. A table of virtually identical form executed in scarlet japanning was sent to Pillnitz for the wedding ceremony of Augustus the Strong's daughter, Augusta Constantia von Cosel, to Graf Friedrich Heinrich von Friesen, in 1725. This table has been identified in the 1721 inventory at the Hollndishe Palais and is now in the Museum Fr Kunsthandwerk, Dresden (G.Haase, 'The Eighteenth-Century Interior Decorations of the Pillnitz Wasser- and Bergpalais', Furniture History, 1985, p.94 and fig.6). The Victoria table almost certainly originally had a japanned top as on this example, as indicated by constructional features to the underside. The distinctive marble top was probably added in Sweden in the 19th Century whence the table was reputedly taken after being purchased by a member of the Swedish ambassadorial staff in Berlin. Another japanned cabinet-on-stand supplied by Schnell for the Porzellankabinett of the Hollndishe Palais features the identical mounts, distinctive scroll-headed legs and cushioned frieze, decorated on a yellow japanned ground. This cabinet, now in the collection of the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin, is illustrated in Schatz-Kstchen und Kabinett-Schrank, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin, 1989, color pl.VII and pp.144-145.
Augustus the Strong's fascination with the Orient is well-documented and is boldly demonstrated in the architecture and furnishing of the Hollndishe (later Japanische) Palais and the Pillnitz Wasser- and Bergpalais, both in Dresden. Martin Schnell, who had worked under the reknown lacquer artist Gerard Dagly in Berlin, was appointed court lacquer-master in 1710, establishing a workshop that provided decoration for furniture as well as Meissen porcelain. There was not a sufficient quantity of lacquer furniture to furnish both palaces, however, and the prime importance of these lacquer pieces is demonstrated in the transfer of select examples from the Hollndishe Palais to Pillnitz for special occasions. A table of virtually identical form executed in scarlet japanning was sent to Pillnitz for the wedding ceremony of Augustus the Strong's daughter, Augusta Constantia von Cosel, to Graf Friedrich Heinrich von Friesen, in 1725. This table has been identified in the 1721 inventory at the Hollndishe Palais and is now in the Museum Fr Kunsthandwerk, Dresden (G.Haase, 'The Eighteenth-Century Interior Decorations of the Pillnitz Wasser- and Bergpalais', Furniture History, 1985, p.94 and fig.6). The Victoria table almost certainly originally had a japanned top as on this example, as indicated by constructional features to the underside. The distinctive marble top was probably added in Sweden in the 19th Century whence the table was reputedly taken after being purchased by a member of the Swedish ambassadorial staff in Berlin. Another japanned cabinet-on-stand supplied by Schnell for the Porzellankabinett of the Hollndishe Palais features the identical mounts, distinctive scroll-headed legs and cushioned frieze, decorated on a yellow japanned ground. This cabinet, now in the collection of the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin, is illustrated in Schatz-Kstchen und Kabinett-Schrank, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin, 1989, color pl.VII and pp.144-145.