THE PORCELAIN HONGZHI PERIOD (1488-1505), THE ORMOLU HANDLE AND SPOUT LOUIS XVI, LATE 18TH CENTURY, THE ORMOLU LID 19TH CENTURY

Although the ormolu mounts to this ewer date to the reign of Louis XVI, the porcelain body was produced several centuries earlier, among the export wares based on Islamic metalwork and intended for the Middle Eastern market. A very similar porcelain ewer is preserved in the Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, and was mounted in the sixteenth century with an Ottoman silver-gilt foot (R. Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi Saray Museum, Istanbul, II, London, 1985, cat. no. 663, p. 545). An unmounted example, formerly in the Henri Pharaon Collection, Beirut, is illustrated in T. Schroder, op. cit., p. 262, fig. 88.

LES SCHLUMBERGERS
The fortunes of the Schlumberger family, originally from Alsace, were founded in the textile industry. One of the first investors in the Suez Canal, the family's shares later expanded into oil in Texas. Pierre Schlumberger married Maria da Diniz, nicknamed São, in 1961. The couple collected paintings by Seurat, Monet, Matisse, Braque, Picasso, Rothko, Reinhardt and Lichtenstein, among others, which they hung in their Parisian residences: an apartment decorated by Gabhan O'Keefe near the Eiffel Tower and in the hôtel de Luzy on rue Férou, as well as at the Clos Fiorentino in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.