A pair of Chinese porcelain cache-pots

A pair of Régence gilt bronze-mounted Chinese famille verte porcelain cache-pots – circa 1715-1723

The porcelain Kangxi Period (1662-1722)

Height: 22.5 cm. (8 ¾ in.) Width: 27.5 cm. (10 ¾ in.)
Diameter of base: 16.2 cm. (6 ½ in.)

These cache-pots illustrate the ingenuity of French craftsmen in adapting Asian works to suit European tastes and usage in the early 18th Century.

They have been created out of the lower sections of baluster-form Chinese porcelain vases decorated with diamond-shaped reserves of different stylized dragons in rocky landscapes painted in the famille verte palette. The Parisian bronzier has mounted them with gilt bronze rims and gadrooned bases joined by pierced strapwork handles fitted with lion’s mask and ring handles and fleurs-de-lys.

Provenance

Collection of Dominique Fromentin, Paris

Comparative Literature

P. Kjellberg, Objets montés du Moyen Age à nos jours, Paris, 2000, p. 34 (ill.)

The lion’s head mounts mirror the lion motifs in the porcelain. The combination of lion’s heads and fleur-de-lys is rare on works from this period: only two further pairs of cache-pots also in famille verte porcelain and of the same size have identical mounts, indicating a common source, likely a marchand-mercier:
– one sold from the collection of Jaime Ortiz-Patiño, Sotheby’s New York, 25 April 1998, lot 234 for $178,000
– another sold Sotheby’s New York, 20 November 1993, lot 90

A third example in blue and white porcelain is illustrated in Kjellberg, op. cit., p. 34.