THE PORCELAIN MID-18TH CENTURY, THE DECORATION OF LATER DATE, BLUE CROSSED SWORDS MARKS, MODELED BY J.J. KÄNDLER AND J.G. EHDER

Kändler first modeled hoopoes in July 1736, as his work report entry for that month records: Einen Wide Hopffen den so genannten Vogel in Lebens Grösse gefertiget Wie er auf einem Aste mit Blättern Bewachsen ruhet⁽¹⁾. In 1741 Johann Gottlieb Ehder reworked these models, as the August entry in his Arbeitsberichte [work report] records: Zwey Vögel, der Wiedehopf genannt, auf Bäumen, in Thon bossiret [two birds, called hoopoes, in trees, sculpted in clay]⁽²⁾. Compare the pair of hoopoes from the Lesley and Emma Sheafer Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, object nos. 1974.356.326-7; and the pair sold in the David and Peggy Rockefeller Collection, Christie’s, New York, 9 May 2018, lot 203.

1. Cited by Ulrich Pietsch, Die Arbeitsberichte des Meissener Porzellanmodelleurs, Johann Joachim Kaendler, Leipzig, 2002, p. 40.
2. Cited by Sarah-Katharina Andres-Acevedo, Die Autonomen Figürlichen Plastiken Johann Joachim Kaendlers und seiner Werkstatt, Stuttgart, 2023, vol. 1, p. 242, and also see vol. 2, p. 117, where other examples are cited.