An early Meissen white porcelain teapot and cover, circa 1713-15

Anonymous sale, Christie’s, Geneva, 17 November 1980, lot 175;

Offered, anonymous sale, Christie’s, Geneva, 11 May 1987, lot 118;

Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, London, 6 March 1990, lot 165;

A Westphalian Private Collection, Van Ham, Cologne, 16 November 2017, lot 3;

Acquired at the above sale.

Applied flower ornamentation, modelled in pronounced high relief, is among the earliest decorative techniques developed at Meissen and features on early Böttger stoneware produced during the manufactory’s first few years. The individual components—the leaves, stems, blossoms, and buds—were individually formed and applied by hand. A further teapot of this form, with traces of cold decoration in green, is illustrated in Ulrich Pietsch, Early Meissen Porcelain. A Private Collection, Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, exh. cat., Lübeck, 1993, pp. 40-41, fig. 25. Another was sold at Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus, Berlin, Porzellansammlung aus Berliner Privatbesitz, 24-25 February 1920, lot 19. A slight variation of the model where the leafy tendrils extend from a branch form handle is in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, acc. no. C.117&A-1940.