Painted in schwarzlot and gold with ‘Leda and the Swan’ and ‘Venus and Cupid’ divided by elaborate harbour scenes.

This superbly decorated bowl shows the art of Daniel and Ignaz Preissler at its most accomplished. It must surely be what their colleague Tobiáš Hanuš described as ‘difficult poetic subjects’ (Poetische Mühesame). The quality of the draughtsmanship and details of the harbour scenes are close to that of the best of the reverse glass paintings which raises the possibility of this bowl being the work of Daniel Preissler.

The continuous scene has been skilfully woven together from popular French or German or prints that were copied produced in large numbers in by Augsburg and Nuremberg publishers.

Leda and the Swan, Paris early 18th century

The buildings, ships and harbour scenes are probably adapted from engravings after artists such as Johann Wilhelm Baur (1607-1642) or Stefano Della Bella (1610-1664).[i]

The thinly potted Böttger porcelain is noticeably warped and there are imperfections in the paste at the rim, this is typical of the sort of pieces of undecorated porcelain that the Preisslers were able to obtain from the Meissen factory.

Condition:
Broken in half and neatly restuck

Provenance:
Christies, London, 29 November 2011, lot 20, Property of a Gentleman
E& H Manners
Anthony du Boulay

Literature:

Manners 2024
E & H Manners, ‘Decorators of Ceramics and Glass’, 2024, no. 14

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[i] See Cassidy-Geiger 199, figs. 34-36 and Bodinek 2018, pp. 34-36 and p.55.

Price : £15,000.00