Lot 9. A Böttger Stoneware Polished Figure of a Pagod, 1713-15; 3 7/8 in.; 9.8 cm high. Lot sold: 23,940 EUR (Estimate: 20,000 - 30,000 EUR). © Sotheby's

the seated robed figure resting his right hand on his knee, the other hand tucked beneath his robes.

Literature: Ulrich Pietsch, Frühes Meissener Porzellanaus einer Privatsammlung, exhibition catalogue, Lübeck, 1993, pp. 26-7, no. 13.

Note: The 1770 inventory of the Japanese Palace records ten Böttger stoneware Pagod figures under number 180:

'Zehen sitzende Pagoden, so zum Räuchern dienen, 4 1/2 Zoll hoch, No. 180', [ Ten seated pagods, for incense, 4 1/2 Zoll high, No. 180],

- Claus Boltz, ‘Japanisches Palais-Inventar 1770 und Turmzimmer-Inventar 1769’, Keramos, No. 153, 1996, p. 106

By the 20th century, all ten bearing the inventory number 180 could be accounted for, as follows:

Four remain today in the Porzellansammlung, Dresden, inv. nos P.E. 891, 2390, 2389, and 2391,

the second illustrated in Willi Goder, et. al., Johann Friedrich Böttger, Die Erfindung des Europäischen Porzellans, Leipzig, 1982 taf. 210, the latter two illustrated in Ulrich Pietsch, Meissener Porzellan und Seine Ostasiatischen Vorbilder, Leipzig, 1996, pl. 61;

Three were included in the sales of 'duplicates' from the Royal Collections of Saxony, Dresden, of these one was sold at Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus, Berlin, 7-8 October 1919, lot 50, now in the Gutter Collection, San Francisco; and two in the second duplicates sale at Lepke's the following year, 12-14 October 1920, lots 75 and 86;

Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus, Berlin, 12-14 October 1920, lots 75 and 86. 

One was in the Collection of Margarethe and Franz Oppenheimer, Berlin & Vienna (by 1927), illustrated as entry no. 1 in the catalogue by Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Sammlung Margarete und Franz Oppenheimer. Meissener Porzellan, Berlin, 1927, no. 1;

One, in the Siegfried Salz Collection, Berlin, sold, Paul Cassirer and Hugo Helbing, Munich, 26 March 1929, lot 49, which subsequently entered the Collections of Henry Arnhold and Thornton Wilson and is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York;

A Böttger stoneware Pagod from the Siegfried Salz Collection, illustrated in Paul Cassirer and Hugo Helbing, Munich, 26 March 1929, lot 49.

And a tenth is in the Wark Collection, illustrated in Ulrich Pietsch, Early Meissen Porcelain, The Wark Collection from The Cummer Museum of Art & Design, Jacksonville, 2011, p. 75, no. 16

A partially polished example, which may be the present lot, was in the Wilhelm Gumprecht Collection, Berlin, sold, Paul Cassirer & Hugo Helbing, Berlin, 21 March 1918, lot 351.

A Böttger stoneware Pagod from the Wilhelm Gumprecht Collection, illustrated in Paul Cassirer & Hugo Helbing, Berlin, 21 March 1918, lot 351.

A further unpolished example, without a Japanese Palace number, was in the Collection formed by Lisa and Heinrich Arnhold and acquired from M. Salomon, Dresden, illustrated in Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, The Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain 1710-1750, New York 2008 p. 238, no. 34, now in the Frick Collection, New York, acc. no. 2014.9.06.

Sotheby's. Transformed by Fire A Private Collection of Early Meissen, Cologne, 1 July 2022