Dresden Bottle, no 374, Famille Verte Porcelain, Kangxi Period (1662-1722), H: 21.9 cm. Price €19.500. VANDERVEN ORIENTAL ART at TEFAF 2024. © 2024 TEFAF

Provenance: - Augustus the Strong, Dresden (engraved mark: N. 139 I)
- With Jacques Van Goidsenhoven, Belgium 1968
- Private Collection, Heverlee, Belgium 2023

Literature: J.P. van Goidsenhoven, La Céramique Chinoise sous les Ts’ing 1644-1851, Brussels, 1936.
Eva Ströber, “La maladie de porcelaine…” East Asian Porcelain from the Collection of Augustus the Strong, Leipzig, 2001.
Christiaan J.A. Jörg, Famille Verte. Chinese Porcelain in Green Enamels, Exhibition Groninger Museum, 2011, p.43, nr.33.
Ruth Sonja Simonis, How to Furnish a Palace. Porcelain Acquisitions in the Netherlands for Augustus the Strong, 1716-1718, Journal for Art Market Studies, Vol 2 nr 3, 2018.
Ruth Sonja Simonis, Microstructures of Global Trade: Porcelain Acquisitions Through Private Networks for Augustus the Strong, Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden, 2020.

The underside of the bottle bears the distinctive black engraved number N:139 I, from the collection inventory of Augustus the Strong in Dresden Germany. The symbol ‘I’ denotes the category ‘Green Chinese porcelain’ under which both the famille verte and rose porcelains were classified.

Augustus the Strong King of Poland and Elector of Saxony (1670 – 1733). amassed around 25,000 pieces of Chinese and Japanese porcelain; his agents scouring Europe to buy for the collection. Uniquely, several inventories of the Dresden porcelain collections were made during the 18th century. The first was written during the lifetime of Augustus the Strong in 1721, the others were made after his death in 1735 and 1779. Each piece of porcelain was painstakingly engraved with an inventory number and symbol - now referred to as a palace number – ordering each object into a category. Today there are still over 8,00 pieces of porcelain in this significant collection.

Latterly the bottle was sold by scholar-dealer J. van Goidsenhoven in Brussels to a private collector. Goidsenhoven wrote several key works on Chinese ceramics including La Céramique Chinois sous les Ts’ing 1644-1851(1936).

Identical bottles with the same number are also in the Porzellansammlung Dresden (inv.nr PO3308 & PO4637). The Burrell Collection, Glasgow, also has a pair of bottles with the same decoration (inv.nr. 38.765 &6). The Fitszwilliam a pair of a similar shape, but with differing decoration of rocks and flowers (inv.nr.OC.14A-1938). The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam has a much larger bottle with comparable decoration of cavorting Fo Dogs (inv.nr Ak-RBK15882).