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Meissen Spirit or Table Barrel


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This item is no longer available
Dates Circa 1740
Medium Porcelain
Origin Germany
Description A rare and important Meissen Spirit or Table Barrel, each of the circular end panels are beautifully painted with extremely detailed and colourful chinoiserie scenes. The bands are painted in a turquoise ground, which have several small detailed quayside scenes in monochrome purple within gilt quatre-lobe panels and a further two quatre-lobed chinoiserie panels either side of the stopper. The stopper or bung is in the form of a bacchanalian putto or youth draped with grapes and leaves around his body and head. He balances a tea bowl and saucer on his head.

Original gilt metal and wooden tap

Small crossed swords mark on the edge of the barrel by the tap

Circa 1735-40

Condition:

The barrel is in wonderful condition (a very small graze to the edge of the opening) the bacchanalian figure has very small restoration to his leg and to the tea bowl and saucer


Condition See description
Literature There are some similarities to the two small bacchanalian figures on the top of the famous chinoiserie clock in the Hermitage dated 1727, which are modelled by Georg Fritzsche (see Fragile Diplomacy by Maureen Cassidy Geiger p.62)

References and Museums:

For other models of barrels in museums and private collections and illustrations see:

The Davids Collection, Copenhagen, p.89, no.30, for a barrel with its own porcelain supporting stand, chinoiserie decoration by Johann Ehrenfried Stadler, no stopper, dated 1725 in underglaze blue. Early lime green rims to both ends of the barrel. this is perhaps the earliest model known before a separate support is designed.

Musée du Louvre, Paris, illustrated in Exhibition Catalogue: Pagodes et Dragons.

Musée Cernuschi, Paris 2007, p.197 no.82 for a Meissen barrel and stand (no stopper), with chinoiserie decoration in the style of Johann Ehrenfried Stadler, circa 1725-30

Morley-fletcher, Hugo, Meissen: p.34, chinoiserie decoration, early figural stopper and figural stand circa 1730, in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich.

Dr Erika Pauls-Eisenbeiss, The Pauls-Eisenbeiss Collection, German Porcelain of the 18th century Vol.1., pp.522-3, where the designer of the figural stopper is discussed.

The Wark Collection of Early Meissen Porcelain in The Cummer Gallery of Art, Jacksonville, Florida. No.43, for a model circa 1740, with Watteauesque decoration and Kandler figures on the base and as the stopper.

Other spirt barrels are also in the following collections:

Mrs C B Stout, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

Hermann Embden Collection, 1908

Von Born Collection, 1925