Pair of Mounted Covered Jars
By the late 1740s, trade with China, which brought large quantities of porcelain wares to Europe, had been ongoing for centuries. This jar and its pair, 1915.8.42, reached France soon after they were made in China in the first half of the eighteenth century. Such large monochrome porcelains were especially rare and costly but did not quench the French elite’s perpetual thirst for novelty. Innovative marchands-merciers often enriched these already lavish objects with elaborate gilt-bronze mounts. Here they feature bulrushes, sea shells, branches of coral, marine rocks, and pearls, combined with abstract scroll motifs in the irrational scale and asymmetric design distinctive of the Rococo, a fanciful style that emerged in Paris in the 1730s and remained in fashion until the 1760s.
Source: Vignon, Charlotte. The Frick Collection Decorative Arts Handbook. New York: The Frick Collection/Scala, 2015.
Possibly Gaillard de Gagny sale, Paris, March 29, 1762, Lot 41. Henry M.W. Oppenheim, London. His sale, Christie’s, London, June 10–17, 1913, Lot 64. Duveen, 1913. Frick, 1915.
Source: Furniture in The Frick Collection: French 18th- & 19th-Century Furniture (Pt. 2) & Gilt Bronzes. Volume VI. New York: The Frick Collection, 1992.
