This is a distinctive Funcke pattern in which the strict symmetry is broken by wayward branch straying beyond the otherwise formal border. Another variant, in now-blackened silver, is in the Malcolm Gutter collection. The richly burnished gilt interior would have been a costly feature suggesting a service of particular richness.

The Dresden goldsmith George Funcke is listed as a paid employee working with Johann Friedrich Böttger in 1710, but from 13 May 1713 is recorded as a porcelain decorator in gold, silver and muffle colours based in Dresden.

Rainer Rückert (1990, pp. 146-148) published documents from the Meissen archives which tell us that Funcke complained that Böttger paid very badly. For several years the firing of the decoration took place in the laboratory on the Venusbastei on the Brühlsche Terrasse on the Elbe, in the centre of Dresden, where the first successful experiments in the manufacture of porcelain had taken place in 1708-09.

In its first decade Meissen outsourced almost all the enamelling and gilding to George Funcke until the arrival of Johann Gregorius Höroldt from Vienna in April 1720. Bills survive showing that Funcke continued to gild for Meissen up until 1726.

The House of Lobkowicz is one of the most notable Czech princely families and great patrons of the arts.

Condition:
Slight wear on gilt interior

Provenance:
Lobkowicz Collection, Prague (bears paper inventory label for Lobkowicz Palace, Vlašská 17, Praha 1)

Collection of Sir Jeffrey Tate Kt. CBE and Klaus Kuhlemann

References:
Maria Santangelo, A Princely Pursuit, The Malcolm D. Gutter Collection of Early Meissen Porcelain, (Hirmer Publishers 2017), p. 79, cat. no. 32, p. 70

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