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, loan no. 83-1961.

Note: Compare with a related vase of the same form and size carved in relief with a dragon and chilong from the Alan and Simone Hartman Collection sold at Christie's Hong Kong, 27 November 2007, lot 1546.