An Extremely Rare Large Chelsea 'Mazarine'-Blue-Ground Large Vase, Circa 1765
Lot Closed
October 17, 06:05 PM GMT
Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
An Extremely Rare Large Chelsea 'Mazarine'-Blue-Ground Large Vase, Circa 1765
finely painted on four sides of the baluster-shaped body with colorful exotic birds perched in leafy tree branches above gilt diaper and scrollwork shaped panels alternating with four gilt-edged 'mazarine' blue-ground panels each with a gilt lambrequin on the shoulder suspended from a gilt diaper and flowerhead band beneath the flaring neck gilded with an elaborate rococo scroll-edged diaper border
Height 21 1/2 in.
54.6 cm
Frank Hurlbutt Collection (by 1942);
Sotheby's London, Property of the late Frank Hurlbutt, Esq., sold, October 9, 1945, lot 145;
Dr. F. Severne Mackenna Collection, Droitwich, Worcestershire;
Hanns and Elisabeth Weinberg and The Antique Company of New York Collection;
Sotheby's New York, November 10-11, 2006, lot 349 (acquired post-sale)
London, The Antique Porcelain Co., Ltd., Coronation Exhibition, 1953
Bellamy Gardner, 'Further History of the Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory', English Ceramic Circle Transactions, London 1942, Vol. 2, No. 8, pl. L;
Dr. F. Severne Mackenna, Chelsea Porcelain, The Gold Anchor Wares, Leigh-on-Sea 1952, p. 20 and pl. 28, fig. 55;
John Mallet, 'Chelsea Gold Anchor Vases - Part 1', English Ceramic Circle Transactions, London 1999, Vol. 17, No. 1 p. 134, fig. 13.
Described by Mackenna, Chelsea Gold Anchor, p. 20, as "unique in my experience", the large size of the present example is certainly unusual for Chelsea. Mackenna also comments, ibid., p. 69, that, while in his collection, Frank Hurlbutt suggested that it might be the vase mentioned in the April 19, 1769, Public Advertiser and reproduced by Nightingale, Early English Porcelain, p. xxvii, "a most suberb Vase, the biggest they [Chelsea] ever made, fit to Crown a Cabinet Collection of any Virtuoso". Two other vases, forming a pair and of similar proportions, painted with figural and landscape subjects and applied around the shoulders with flower garlands were sold at Sotheby's, London April 27, 1976, lot 117.
Among the few surviving vases of this scale are two baluster vases in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, respectively so-called 'The Chesterfield Vase' and 'The Foundling Vase', acc. objs. C.53&A-1964 and C.52-1964. The pair, painted with Boucher figure subjects to the front, are painted with similar style birds, although in landscapes, to the versos. Two of the same form are in the Irwin Untermyer Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1970.313.1a, b/2a, b.
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