.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This is one of several services made for the Sampaio e Melo family. The services were all made during the first or second decade of the eighteenth century and each bears the same coat-of-arms but the porcelain is decorated in a different palette. However, the person or even branch of the family for whom they were made, has been a matter of much speculation and contrasting views. This is discussed at length by A. Varela Santos, Portugal in Porcelain from China: 500 years of trade, vol. III, London, 2009, pp. 822-831; the author also illustrates several examples from the various services.
What is undisputed is the importance and magnificence of the pieces in each service. From the known examples, the services comprised, as mentioned by Maria Antónia Pinto de Matos "the rarest and most sophisticated examples of porcelain ever made in China for the Western market" (The RA Collection of Chinese Ceramics: A Collector's Vision, London and Lisbon, 2011, p. 31). In addition to impressive sets of soldier vases and other vases of various forms, there are cutlery boxes and covers, wine coolers, chapel candlesticks, barbers' bowls, unusual tripod sugar casters, trays, bottles and covers (as in the present lot), as well as the more usual dishes, plates, tea-caddies, etc.; see de Matos ibid., pp. 31 - 51 for several examples from the different services, and in particular no. 418, pp. 46 & 47 for one of the very few known bottles and covers decorated in the same palette as the pair in the present lot. The author suggests that these bottles with their tight-fitting covers were probably used for alchoholic liquids and that the covers seal tightly to prevent evaporation. A Sampaio e Melo bottle and cover of very similar form but decorated in the Imari palette is illustrated by Santos, ibid., p. 831, fig. 9. A bottle and cover, again in the Imari palette, was sold Sotheby's London, 5 November 2008, lot 306.
What is undisputed is the importance and magnificence of the pieces in each service. From the known examples, the services comprised, as mentioned by Maria Antónia Pinto de Matos "the rarest and most sophisticated examples of porcelain ever made in China for the Western market" (The RA Collection of Chinese Ceramics: A Collector's Vision, London and Lisbon, 2011, p. 31). In addition to impressive sets of soldier vases and other vases of various forms, there are cutlery boxes and covers, wine coolers, chapel candlesticks, barbers' bowls, unusual tripod sugar casters, trays, bottles and covers (as in the present lot), as well as the more usual dishes, plates, tea-caddies, etc.; see de Matos ibid., pp. 31 - 51 for several examples from the different services, and in particular no. 418, pp. 46 & 47 for one of the very few known bottles and covers decorated in the same palette as the pair in the present lot. The author suggests that these bottles with their tight-fitting covers were probably used for alchoholic liquids and that the covers seal tightly to prevent evaporation. A Sampaio e Melo bottle and cover of very similar form but decorated in the Imari palette is illustrated by Santos, ibid., p. 831, fig. 9. A bottle and cover, again in the Imari palette, was sold Sotheby's London, 5 November 2008, lot 306.