THE PORCELAIN CIRCA 1740, MODELED BY J.J. KÄNDLER, THE ORMOLU MID-18TH CENTURY AND ASSOCIATED

Kändler originally created life-size models of magpies for Augustus the Strong’s Japanese Palace in February 1733, the same month that the king died. His work report records Eine Aelster in Lebengrösse [A Magpie in Lifesize]⁽¹⁾. Six enameled magpies were delivered to the Japanese Palace in October and November that year and by March 1736 there were nineteen in the Palace's inventory. In 1740 Kändler reworked the models slightly, adding foliage to the tree-stump and giving the birds new claws, as his work report entry for May records: Unterschiedliche Zierliche Blätter in Thon poussiret Womit die Postamenter der Vögel beleget und verzieret werden. Wie auch einige Neue Krallen zum Alastern gefertiget⁽²⁾. For an illustration of the 1733 model with a slightly plainer tree-stump base, see Rainer Rückert, Meissener Porzellan, Bayerischen Nationalmuseum, Munich, Exhibition Catalogue, Munich 1966, pl. 271, no. 1105.

1. Cited by Ulrich Pietsch, Die Arbeitsberichte des Meissener Porzellanmodelleurs, Johann Joachim Kaendler, Leipzig, 2002, p.
2. Cited by Ulrich Pietsch, ibid, 2002, p. 70.