Live Auction 7800Centuries of Style: Silver, European Ceramics, Portrait Miniatures and Gold Boxes
Lot 50 VARIOUS PROPERTIES

A MEISSEN ORMOLU-MOUNTED CANDLESTICK MODEL OF A PEACOCK

CIRCA 1730, THE ORMOLU BASE, DRIP-PAN AND NOZZLE FIRST HALF OF THE 18TH CENTURY, THE BRANCHES LATER

Closed17 November 2009

Estimate

GBP 50,000–80,000

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A MEISSEN ORMOLU-MOUNTED CANDLESTICK MODEL OF A PEACOCK
CIRCA 1730, THE ORMOLU BASE, DRIP-PAN AND NOZZLE FIRST HALF OF THE 18TH CENTURY, THE BRANCHES LATER
Modelled by Georg Fritzche with its head turned towards its tail, with a moulded blue neck and body feathers, its wings with brown, yellow, blue and turquoise plumage with blue and iron-red and yellow tips, its tail displayed, with scaled legs and black claws on a mottled purple and turquoise oval base before a tree-stump supporting a tôle branch applied with French soft paste flowers and terminating in an ormolu and foliate drip-pan and nozzle, the base with an ormolu mount cast with radiating stiff leaves and applied with salamanders, shells and foliage (some very slight flaking to blue enamel on head, slight chipping to flowers)
10½ in. (26.7 cm.) high

Specialist note

Examples of this rare Meissen model have survived mounted and un-mounted, and it is interesting to note that most un-mounted examples are decorated in a muted palette of earth tones, whereas the gilt-bronze mounted examples are painted in the bright colours associated with Arita porcelain.

Examples in important museum collections include five mounted examples marked with a caduceus mark in the Residenz, Munich, a pair of mounted models with caduceus marks in the Musée du Louvre, Paris; a single un-mounted example in the Historisches Museum, Bern and the marked and mounted example from the Kramarsky Collection, sold by Christie's New York on 30 October 1993, lot 25, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Another mounted example was sold in these Rooms on 24 February 1997, lot 273 and another (lacking a mount) by Christie's New York on 23 April 1998, lot 219.

Un-mounted examples include two examples of paler hue from the Property of a Lady sold by Sotheby's London on 24 May 2006, lots 10 and 11; and an example from the Mühsam Collection, sold by Glückselig, Vienna, on 27-30 April 1925, lot 43.