P180 - CHINESE FUKIEN BLANC-DE-CHINE BOTTLE WITH COVER

 

Mid 17th or 18th Century, incise Japanese Palace inventory number N=28/Δ

The teardrop bottle sprigged with flowering prunus, the cover with knop finial

6 ¼ in (15.9 cm) high

 

LITERATURE

Cleo M. and G. Ryland Scott Jr., Antique Porcelain Digest, Newport, England, 1961, p. 187, plate 29, fig 118.

 

EXHIBITION

On display in the Scott-Allen Collection at The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia from 1976 until 1996

 

On display in the “George Ryland Scott Collection” in The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art from June 1955 until May 1960.

 

NOTES BY CLEO M. AND G. RYLAND SCOTT, JR IN THE LATE 1950’S

This bottle was purchased from Webber, an antique dealer in Frankford, Germany, in 1950. Webber had purchased the piece from a collector who said it was Bottger Porcelain 1717.

 

The cover has the "Johanneum" mark cut into the porcelain. This was a mark used by Augustus as an inventory mark for specimens in his own collection in the Japanese Palace or Dresden Museum. It is supposed to have become necessary when members of the court would steal pieces so that the Emperors agents could send them a bill for the piece.

 

This specimen was recognized by us as being Blanc-de-Chine of the Ming Period and the Johanneum mark was also the one used to designate Chinese specimens in the all white.

 

When we reached home, we found in Hanover's Book on Pottery and Porcelain a photograph of a group of all white Chinese porcelain which he had taken in the Dresden Museum and in this group we discovered our wine bottle. We also found in Chaffers Marks and Monograms a statement showing that Frederick the Great had sold this group of white Chinese pieces to Augustus the strong for a certain number of dragoons of foot soldiers to be used in one of Frederick's wars.