A rare Furstenberg dated gilt metal mounted tobacco vase and cover

1756, MARKED WITH AN UNDERGLAZE BLUE F

Details

A rare Furstenberg dated gilt metal mounted tobacco vase and cover
1756, marked with an underglaze blue F
Early period, probably painted in colours by Johann Friedrich Metzsch after engravings by Johann Esaias Nilson "Caffe The und Tobac Zierathen", the cylindrical body with narrowing neck moulded with oblique ribs and decorated with bouquets of Deutsche Blumen, the front with an elaborate gilt rocaille cartouche in slight relief enclosing a scene of a tobacconist shop with various customers, a servant bending over bales inscribed 4 M and 3 Y F, under a panel inscribed Toute Sorte de Tabac d'Espagne Ao 1756, the reverse with the mooring of a galleon at the Virginian coast with two gentlemen and two blacks beside bales, the domed cover decorated en suite with a seated blackamoor probably modelled by Simon Feilner, wearing a feathered headdress and holding a shield whilst inscribing Tabac d'Espag... with a minute pencil, with contemporary gilt metal palmetto-shaped mounts to the cover, upper edge and foot
30.5cm. (12 in.) high

Lot Essay

This type of vase is unrecorded in S. Ducret, Fürstenberger Porzellan, 3 volumes (Braunschweig 1965) and A. Lorenz, Weisses Gold aus Fürstenberg (Braunschweig 1988) and further list of available Fürstenberg literature in the Dutch national libraries.
B. Beaucamp Markowsky, Porzellandosen (München 1985), p. 302, states that Andreas Philipp Oetner worked from 1756 onwards as a painter in Fürstenberg. Ducret erroneously ascribed his work to J.H. Eissenträger.
S. Ducret, Fürstenberger Porzellan, Band II (Braunschweig 1965), p. 42, ill. 23 for similar high quality painting to be dated circa 1759

The painting department of the Fürstenberg porcelain manufactory was connected in 1756 to the academy of fine arts of Braunschweig (Brunswick), which increased the standards of painting at the porcelain manufactory tremendously.

See illustrations and frontcover

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