A Meissen porcelain Hausmaler waste bowl, the porcelain circa 1715-20, the decoration circa 1735-51

Geneva, Musée Ariana, 1999, Au pays de l'or blanc: Une collection privée genevoise de porcelaine de Meissen (with applied paper exhibition label).

Bayreuth was an important centre for hausmaler decoration and by 1735 Johann Friederich Metzsche, who had been working in Dresden, had set up his workshop, employing several painters. A small number of pieces with his name in full, or bearing JFM, JM and M monograms, and sometimes a date, are known and help us attribute a range of styles to him and his workshop. Metzsche was active in Bayreuth until 1751, when he went to Fürstenberg, in search of a more consistent supply of porcelain to decorate. For a detailed discussion of Metzsche’s workshop see Errol Manners, Decorators of Ceramics and Glass, Independent, Itinerant and the Hausmaler, exh. cat., London, 2024, pp. 148-154, where the author illustrates three documentary pieces in museum collections. A Meissen beaker, with a high relief acanthus leaf border heightened in dark puce enamel and gilding and painted with a panel of a putto, in a similar style to the present lot, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, accession no. C.187-1933.