Decorated in schwarzlot with red highlights. The pastoral vignettes are set amongst classical ruins. The scenes are in the manner of the prolific Dutch artist Nicolaes Berchem who produced many engravings of this type.

Another very similar service was sold recently in Bonhams, the coffee pot was hallmarked with the Augsburg mark for 1722-26. ^[1] The decoration is so similar in every detail that one would presume it to be of the same date.

The quality and style of the decoration seems to be very close in quality to the best of the Watteau decoration, and the signed Abraham Seuter coffeepot ^[2]. Which would suggest that this service is also probably painted by Abraham Seuter.

The same scene was also used on an experimental green monochrome coffeepot in the Gardiner Museum, which is said to have a hallmark for 1739-41. The perspectives are less precise, but the style is similar enough to think that it was also probably painted by Abraham Seuter. This would post-date Johann Paulus’ death, also Bartholomäus would have been 62 at this point, and presumably less active in the decorating workshop.

Gardiner Museum, Elias Adams hallmark for 1739-41

Condition:

Restoration to lower tip of handle on coffee pot. Slight losses to gilding

Provenance:

Two saucers with paper label “Martha Isaacson”
Martha Isaacson, Seattle
The Robert Compton Jones Collection

Literature:

Ducret 1971
Ducret, Siegfried, Meissner Porzellan bemalt in Augsburg, 1718 bis um 1750, (Klinkhardt & Biermann, Braunschweig, 1971), vol. II, for the coffee pot, pp. 100-101 pl. 76 & 77.

Manners 2024:
‘E & H Manners, ‘Decorators on Ceramics and Glass’, 2024, no. 31

Footnotes:

[1] See lot 82, Bonhams Paris, 15 November 2023.
[2] See Mischell 1976.

Price: £35,000