STYLE: Furniture, Silver, Ceramics
STYLE: Furniture, Silver, Ceramics
A VERY RARE CHELSEA LARGE POT-POURRI IN THE FORM OF A RUINOUS DOVE-COTE, CIRCA 1756
This lot has been withdrawn
Lot Details
Description
A VERY RARE CHELSEA LARGE POT-POURRI IN THE FORM OF A RUINOUS DOVE-COTE, CIRCA 1756
in the form of a machicolated circular brickwork tower, with a pierced and stepped top around which perch pigeons and squabs, the top surmounted with three over-hanging circular turrets, raised upon a mount base applied with flowers and leaves with roses climbing up the sides of the tower with a fox peering up at a pigeon in front of the tower door, dark iron-red anchor mark
height 15½in.
39.4 cm
James A. Lewis and Son, New York, by 1951
Collection of Mrs. Edward F. Hutton, Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc., New York, June 7-10, 1972, lot 269
Christie's New York, November 25, 2003, lot 332
F. Severne Mackenna, Chelsea Porcelain- The Red Anchor Wares, Leigh-on-Sea, 1951, pl. 46, no. 92
This whimsical model is a tour-de-force of early English porcelain production. Perhaps due to its complicated modelling and the unpredictable nature of wood-burning kilns, the dove-cote pot-pourri may have only been attempted a few times at the Chelsea factory. Indeed there appears to be only three known examples of this model recorded from the early red-anchor period. One was sold at Christie's London, January 29, 1973, lot 80, and is now in the Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco, gifted by Mrs. Constance Bowles Hart in memory of Henry Bowles in 1986, inv. no. 1986.45-a-e. This piece is the closest to the present lot which also features a fox. A second, without the figure of a fox, from the Collection of Captain M. Denham, sold at Sotheby’s London, May 12. 1959, lot 44, its current whereabouts unknown. The present lot comprises the third known example.
The model is recorded in the Chelsea catalogue of the 1756 sale, ninth day, Wednesday April 7, lot 67, as:
“A most beautiful perfume pot in the form of an old castle or pigeon house, decorated with pigeons, etc.”
The model was continued and slightly altered with the addition of a scroll-edged raised foot in the gold-anchor period of the 1770s. One is in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gifted by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman in 1971, acc. no. 1971.206.25. A second gold-anchor example also from the Wrightsman Collection is illustrated in C. C. Dauterman, The Wrightsman Collection: Volume IV, Porcelain, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1970, p. 353, pl. 160B, and was subsequently sold at Christie’s New York, Property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 22, 1998, lot 461.
The model is undeniably one of the largest attempted by the Chelsea factory at this early period, and is just three inches shorter than the red-anchor pair of large Chelsea figures of Peacocks, sold at Sotheby's London, December 4, 2013, lot 436. An interesting comparable piece is a candlestick in the form of a dovecote, circa 1756-58, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, mus. no. C.374-1921.
The idealized and romantic subject of a ruinous dovecote was occasionally visited by contemporary painters, including Francois Boucher, as seen in the 1758 painting The Dovecote now in the Saint Louis Art Museum, obj. no. 75:1937; and the engraving Paysage au Pont et au Pigeonnier by Pierre François Laurent, after Boucher, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.