Live Auction 1162Centuries of Style, Silver, European Ceramics, Portrait Miniatures and Gold Boxes
A PAIR OF HISPANO-MORESQUE DRUG-JARS
Lot 1

A PAIR OF HISPANO-MORESQUE DRUG-JARS

CIRCA 1435-75, VALENCIA, PROBABLY MANISES

Closed27 November 2013

Price Realised

GBP 98,500

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A PAIR OF HISPANO-MORESQUE DRUG-JARS
CIRCA 1435-75, VALENCIA, PROBABLY MANISES
Each of waisted form with a tall neck, boldly decorated with four registers of alternating copper lustre and blue ivy leaves with sgraffito veining, amongst fern leaves, tendrils and flowerheads within double blue concentric lines (some chipping to rims, slight glaze flaking)
12.5/8 in. (32 cm.) high

Anton Philips, Holland, and thence by descent to the present owner.
One inscribed in ink: 'SBI 1242/7 & 7A', both bearing paper a label inscribed 'S.B. Lot No. 1242/Art. No. 7 & 7a.'

Specialist note

For a pair of similarly decorated armorial albarelli formerly in the collection of Henry Wallis and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, see Anthony Ray, Spanish Pottery 1248-1898, London, 2000, p. 85, nos. 181 & 182. Another example is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, museum no. WA1967.44, and a pair from the Charles Gillot Collection were sold by Christie's Paris on 4-5 March 2008, lot 366A. The appearance of a similar Hispano-Moresque drug-jar in a late 15th century altarpiece 1 not only confirms the importance and luxury status of such jars, but also that they could have other uses. The central panel shows a similar drug-jar in use as a vase with lilies.

1. The altarpiece (now in the Uffizi, Florence) was commissioned by the Florentine Tommaso Portinari between 1473 and 1482 and painted in Bruges by Hugo van der Goes.