Property from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
A Rare Chelsea Porcelain Mazarine Blue-Ground Toilet Box and Cover, circa 1760
No reserve
Auction Closed
June 17, 06:12 PM GMT
Estimate
2,000 - 3,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
circular form with gilt metal mounts, the cover with a bouquet of mixed flowers, the interior with a rustic landscape of boats on a river, the sides of the box with gilt-edged panels of birds perched in trees, reserved by a mazarine-blue ground
The Estate of Ailsa Mellon Bruce
Toilet pots and toilette candlesticks appear repeatedly in sales of Chelsea porcelain stock, many described as painted in the ‘fable pattern’ or enriched with burnished gilding. For example, in the third day’s sale of 16 February 1770, lot 54 comprised:
“Five toilet-boxes of the mazarine blue, richly enamell’d and chas’d in gold, with figures, birds, &c.” (£3 3s).
Similarly, on 21 July 1764, Mr Burnsall advertised, among other things:
“A Most grand and capital Lot of the Mazarine Blue and Gold, of the Chelsea Porcelain, containing a Dressing Glass and three Drawers, neatly mounted in Gold, with different Gold Instruments, and Twelve Toilet Boxes to ditto, all of the rich Mazarine Blue and Gold...”
as quoted in Contributions Towards the History of Early English Porcelain, p. xxiv.
A further box of the present type, likewise with a mazarine-blue ground and probably painted by Jefferyes Hamett O'Neale, was sold at Bonhams, London, 14 April 2010, lot 86.