Lot Essay
Famille noire was the most legendary enamel combination for the millionaire clients of Joseph Duveen, when he was building the great 'English country house taste' collections for newly-rich American plutocrat collectors like Henry Clay Frick, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and the Widener dynasty. Frick is recorded as having paid US$100,000 for a famille noire square baluster vase before World War One, probably the one still exhibited today in the Fifth Avenue Frick mansion in New York. A set of three famille noire vases was displayed at the famous Berlin Exhibition, 1929, Catalogue no.920, from the L. Wannieck Collection, Paris. This set was of equal rarity and interest, in the context of collecting highly expensive export pieces in the early 20th Century. See the almost identical vase in the five-piece garniture sold in these Rooms, 5 October 1970, lot 149 by order of the Trustees of the late A.C.J. Wall, Esq., and illustrated by A. du Boulay, op.cit., p.233, fig.16; two vases from this garniture were originally in the Collection of H.S.H. Prinz Johannes von und zu Liechtenstein, no.904; the third vase and the two beakers were originally in the R.W.M. Walker Collection and subsequently sold in these Rooms, 12 July 1945, lot 97