Modelled with pierced mouth and ears to act as an incense burner. The identical model occurs in Böttger stoneware. They are described in early factory records as “Sitzende Indianische Pagoden”.[i]

Whilst some early Meissen models are taken directly from Chinese porcelain, this is not after Chinese blanc de chine but is perhaps loosely based on a soapstone figure. It is essentially a European chinoiserie invention. The modelling is sometimes attributed to Johann Joachim Kretschmar.[ii]

Such figures with numerous variants were immensely popular. The inventory list of the Meissen sales warehouse in Dresden, drawn up after the death of J. F. Böttger in 1719, lists ’40 small pagodas’ in white fired porcelain in the Albrechtsburg in Meissen. The equivalent list for the Leipzig warehouse lists ’18 large pagodas […] enamelled white’.[iii]

Europe was conflicted in how to respond to the astonishing civilisation that was being revealed to them by contact with China. The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) wrote “In the kingdom of China, administration and the arts, without any commerce or knowledge of ours, offer examples that surpass ours in many excellent features; and its history teaches me how much wider and more diverse the world is than either the ancients or us have been able to enter into”[iv]. Julia Weber points out that one way to respond to this world was to create such images of it, sometimes flattering, sometimes less so.

Condition:
Small chip to corner of flange behind the right ear

Provenance:
Private collection, Italy

References:

Pietsch & Banz 2010
Ulrich Pietsch (Ed.), Claudia Banz (Ed.), Triumph of the Blue Swords: Meissen Porcelain for Aristocracy and Bourgeoisie, (2010)

Rückert 1990
Rainer Rückert, Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, (1990)

Weber 2024

Julia Weber, “Auf Indianische Arth”: Figural Representations of Asians and Ottomans in Meissen Porcelain’, in The Magnificence of Rococo. Kaendler’s Meissen Porcelain Figures, edited by Alfredo Reyes and Claudia Bodinek, pp. 76–107, (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2024)

SOLD