Provenance: Sir Ernest Joseph Cassel (1852-1921)
Lady Delamere.

Sir Ernest Joseph Cassel GCB GCMG GCVO PC (1852-1921), a German Jew, who arrived penniless in Liverpool, England, in 1869, quickly rose within the banking industry to become one of the wealthiest men in England of his day. Cassel became a close friend of King Edward VII, prime minister Herbert Asquith and Winston Churchill. He was a generous philanthropist whose benefactions included large sums of money for education, hospitals and the British Red Cross. He also built and endowed an Anglo-German Institute in 1911 in memory of King Edward VII.

Cassel formed an extensive art collection and also had many beautiful houses. After the early death of his wife Annette, his widowed sister helped him bring up his daughter. His only child, Maude Cassel (1879-1911) also died young. He doted on the two granddaughters she left him, especially the eldest, Edwina, who went on to marry Lord Mountbatten. His only child having predeceased him, the art collection was inherited by Cassel's two granddaughters: Lady Delamere and her sister Edwina Mountbatten. The following lots (nos. 3594-3601) were inherited by Lady Delamere and bequeathed to her sons.

Exhibited: The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England, 1961-1998.

Note: Yellow jade vases are extremely rare due to the scarcity of the material and they appear to have found particular favour with the court during the 18th century. Three yellow jade vases in the Palace Musuem Collection include one with very similar scroll handles and finial illustrated in Jadeware (III), The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Hong Kong, 1995, p. 181, no. 148 and two examples illustrated in Zhongguo Meishu Quanji, vol. 9, Jade, Beijing, 1986, pp. 186-187, nos. 316-317. A yellow jade vase of very similar form to the present example from the Harry Weinrebe Collection was exhibited by Messrs. S. Marchant & Son, Eighteenth Anniversary Exhibition of Chinese Jades from the Han to the Qing, p. 128, no. 109 and is included in the present sale, lot 3636. A yellow jade double vase group in the National Palace Museum, Taipei is illustrated in Masterworks of Chinese Jade in the National Palace Museum - Supplement, Japan, 1973, no. 33.