Johann Gregorius Höroldt arrived in Meissen with a chinoiserie style that he had already developed in Vienna. A few early pieces of Du Paquier porcelain similarly decorated are likely to have been decorated by Höroldt before 1720 whilst he was still in Vienna.[i] Höroldt is recorded as having painted a service in iron-red at Meissen as early as 1720, soon after his arrival.[ii]
Du Paquier porcelain probably painted by Johann Gregorius Höroldt in Vienna, Circa 1719, Mary and Peter White Collection
The design for our saucer is precisely copied on a sheet in the Schulz, where it is drawn in a roundel.[iii] The purpose of the drawings in the collections of sheets known as the Schulz Codex seems to vary. Some are intended as designs by Höroldt for his painters to follow or to practice copying, others such as this are likely to be a record of a service before it left the factory, it is very unusual to find quite such a close correspondence.
Our beaker and saucer comes from a service sold by Christie’s on 28 June 1976 (lots 138 – 143). Several pieces from the service were exhibited in Dresden in the Johann Gregorius Höroldt Exhibition in 1996.[iv] A beaker and saucer and a teabowl and saucer are in the Carabelli Collection[v] and the slop bowl was in the collection of Sir Jeffrey Tate and Klaus Kuhlemann, London. Another beaker and saucer from the Arnhold Collection is now in the Frick Collection.[vi]
Condition:
Tiny chip to the foot ring of beaker
Provenance:
Christie’s, London, 28 June 1976, lot 140, ’Property of a Lady’
Literature:
Manners 2024
‘E & H Manners, ‘Decorators on Ceramics and Glass’, 2024, no. 6
References:
Brittle Beauty 2023
Claudia Lehner-Jobst, Brittle Beauty: Reflections on 18th-Century European Porcelain, (2023)
Cassidy-Geiger 2008
M. Cassidy-Geiger, The Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain 1710-50, (2008)
Pietsch 1996
Ulrich Pietsch, Johann Gregorius Höroldt (1696-1775) und die Meissener Porzellanmalerei, (1996)
White 2021
Mary and Peter White, Drinking at the White’s House, (2021)
Pietsch 2000
Ulrich Pietsch, Frühes Meissener Porzellan, Sammlung Carabelli, (Munich, 2000)
Schulz Codex 1978
Das Meissener Musterbuch für Höroldt-Chinoiserien (The Schulz Codex), (Edition Leipzig 1978)
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[i] Some Vienna Du Paquier pieces decorated with designs found in the Schulz codex are thought to have been copied from Höroldt style Meissen pieces in Vienna. This flask seems closer to the hand of G. H. Höroldt himself. For a summary of Höroldt’s time in Vienna see Claudia Lehner-Jobst’s entry on a ‘Mustard pot with cover’ in Brittle Beauty, no. 10, pp.72-81.
[ii] Pietsch 1996 p. 38.
[iii] Schulz Codex 1978 pl. 21.
[iv] Pietsch 1996, nos. 7-12.
[v] Pietsch 2000, nos. 2-3.
[vi] Cassidy-Geiger 2008, no. 74.
