Lot 16. A very rare Meissen silver-gilt-mounted tankard, circa 1723-24; 18.8cm high. Estimate £ 30,000 - 50,000  (€ 34,000 - 56,000). Sold for £ 35,062 (€ 39,087). © Bonhams

Finely painted, probably by J.G. Höroldt, with a chinoiserie scene after Martin Engelbrecht depicting a potentate seated on a throne beneath drapery and flanked by guards, below him three seated figures on each side of a table, a formal garden and pagodas in the distance, within a shield-shaped cartouche of an underglaze-blue line embellished with gilt scrollwork enclosing Böttger lustre and edged with iron-red scrollwork, the reverse with four birds and insects in flight and a sprig of indianische Blumen on the handle, the mounts probably Augsburg, circa 1725, the cover with a quatrelobe relief panel depicting a Turk seated in front of a camel, holding a sword and a spear, enclosed by strap- and scrollwork, the shoulder with a band of similar scroll- and strapwork enclosing four small circular relief medallions depicting classical busts in profile, the thumbpiece with two lion's head terminals, (restuck section at rear).

Provenance: Anon. sale, Law Fine Art, Hungerford, Berkshire, 25 September 2001, lot 197

Note: Two other early Meissen tankards attributed to J.G. Höroldt and painted with a similar scene after a print by Martin Engelbrecht of around 1720, titled 'Nobilissimus Dominus Kiakouli in Villa sua/Der Hoch Edle Herr Kiakouli in seinem Lust Hause' from the series "Sinesische Trachten und Gebräuche nach jetziger beliebten Art zum ausschneiden dienlich" are recorded. The tankard now in the Stout Collection, Memphis, and formerly in the collections of Margarethe and Franz Oppenheimer, Dr. Fritz Mannheimer and Ralph Wark, follows Engelbrecht's print most closely. Another tankard, formerly in the Dr. Marcel Nyffeler Collection and now in the Carabelli Collection, is closer in composition to the present lot, with the six seated figures at a lower table below the seated potentate (U. Pietsch, Frühes Meißener Porzellan Sammlung Carabelli (2000). no. 55). The related drawing of the scene is on pl. 12 of the Schulz Codex.

Martin Engelbrecht, 'Nobilissimus Dominus Kiakouli in Villa sua/Der Hoch Edle Herr Kiakouli in seinem Lust Hause' from the series "Sinesische Trachten und Gebräuche nach jetziger beliebten Art zum ausschneiden dienlich", around 1720.

Five other early Meissen tankards with chinoiserie scenes attributed to Höroldt and the cartouche outlined in underglaze-blue were exhibited in the 1996 Dresden exhibition dedicated to Höroldt (U. Pietsch, Johann Gregororius Höroldt 1696-1775 (1996), 104 and 106-109). One of these, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, inv. no. 1934.1352 (Pietsch, no. 108), has closely similar silver mounts, as does the tankard in the Arnhold Collection, New York, published by M. Cassidy-Geiger, The Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain 1710-50 (2008), no. 164. The latter is marked with the pinecone mount for Augsburg and an illegible maker's mark.