Details
A BOAR'S HEAD TUREEN AND COVER
Circa 1765
The animal head naturalistically modelled with raised snout and staring eyes, the mouth open revealing teeth, tongue and fangs, his snout and ears glazed in tones of iron-red and his hide markings in densely packed strokes of grisaille, molded around the jaws and neck with rows of bristles above a pink enamel collar, at the back of the head three large knobs
14 3/8in. (36.5cm.)
Provenance
The collection of Florence Adele Sloane Burden and James A. Burden of 3 East 93rd Street and Woodside Acres, Syosset, Long Island. Florence was a granddaughter of William H. Vanderbilt, eldest son of the Commodore, and numbered among her cousins Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough. She travelled in Europe with Gertrude and with such friends as Helena Woolworth McCann and Henry du Pont, buying for her townhouse and for the house on Long Island, a Delano & Aldrich design built in 1913
By descent through the family
A descendant, the consignor

Lot Essay

A boar's head of this model from the collection of Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland is in the Peabody Essex Museum and illustrated by W.R. Sargent, The Copeland Collection, p. 202, where the author notes that the records of the Dutch East India Company document an order of 25 boar's head tureens in the 1763 season. In 1764 19 were shipped home to Holland but a further order was not fulfilled because "the supercargoes considered them too risky".
The animal tureen form was fashionable in Europe in the mid-18th century, when faience or soft-paste models were made at Strasbourg, Palissy, Chelsea, Hochst and other factories. A faience boar's head tureen made at Kiel in Denmark is illustrated by D.L. Fennimore and P.A. Halfpenny in The Campbell Collection of Soup Tureens at Winterthur, p. 173, as is a Chelsea example, p. 148, where the authors quote a Chelsea factory auction catalogue of March 18, 1755 listing "a very curious TUREEN in the form of a BOAR'S HEAD". Whether Chinese porcelain or European pottery, boar's head tureens must have made an impressive effect on the dining table, especially when filled with hot soup or stew emitting clouds of steam through the snout

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