A RARE PAIR OF EUROPEAN SUBJECT CASKETS

EARLY QIANLONG PERIOD

Details

A RARE PAIR OF EUROPEAN SUBJECT CASKETS
EARLY QIANLONG PERIOD
Each of square section and rising from a fixed, galleried, square stand set at each corner with a smiling Buddhist lion, enamelled on two sides with European couples taking tea and on the other two with musicians, the scenes with varying detail, all bordered by colorful rocaillerie and between iron-red and gilt lotus scroll and diaper cell bands at top and bottom
8¼ in. (21 cm.) square

Provenance

With Joseph & Earle D. Vandekar, London
J.B. Pangman, Esq., Ontario, Canada
The present owner

Lot Essay

This rare form seems to have been made in sizes. Four pairs are known, all with the same charming renditions of foreign couples and musicians (otherwise seen only in scalloped dinner plates): a large pair, with covers, sold Sotheby's Monaco, 23 June 1986, lot 1106, a still larger pair, without covers, in the collection of the Winterthur Museum, Delaware, and a pair smaller than the present lot, but with covers, sold Christie's London, 13 November 2001, lot 282. The Winterthur pair, which curiously has short bracket feet not apparently made for any of the others, is illustrated by both A.M. Palmer, Chinese Export Porcelain, pp. 80-81, where the author calls them "extraordinary jardinieres", and by Hervouet and Bruneau, op. cit., p. 146 (one).

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