A very rare Meissen beaker and saucer, circa 1728
Painted with blue monochrome chinoiserie scenes, each depicting a single figure flanked by flowering plants and fences, within a gilt quatrelobe scrollwork cartouches filled with Böttger lustre and edged with purple and iron-red scrolls, gilt scrollwork borders to the rims, three branches of indianische Blumen to the reverse of the saucer, similar sprigs to the sides of the beaker, the beaker: 7.5cm high, crossed swords marks in underglaze-blue (minor rubbing to saucer) (2)
Footnotes:
A teabowl and saucer with similar rare blue monochrome chinoiserie scenes from a different service is in the Wark Collection, see U. Pietsch, Early Meissen Porcelain The Wark Collection (2011), no. 111; another teabowl and saucer from the same service was in the Darmstädter Collection, sold by Lepke's Berlin 24-26 March 1925, lot 129.

The figure on the saucer appears to be holding a Chinese puzzleball which serves as an incense burner, possibly a European interpretation of an Asian flaming pearl, seen frequently on Asian porcelain. It is likely that the shape was also in some way based on an ivory turned Contrefait Kugel, of which there were many examples kept in the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden.

The earliest written reference to a concentric ivory sphere appears in the late-fourteenth-century connoisseur Cao Zhao's 曹昭 Essential Criteria of Antiquities (Gegu yaolun 格古要論), parts of which were first published in 1388. In his text, Cao recalls seeing 'a hollow-centered ivory ball, which had two concentric balls inside it, both of which can revolve. It is a 'demon's ball' (guigongqiu 鬼功球), or one made by someone in the Inner Court of the Song dynasty' (original quote: 尝有象牙圆球一个，中直通一窍，内车二（数）重，皆可转动，故谓之鬼功球，或云宋内院中作者). Bonhams would like to thank Joyce Yusi Zhou for her kind assistance in providing this quote and its translation.

There is a bit of scattered flaking to the gilt rims on beaker and saucer. There are three small areas of rubbing to the cartouche on the saucer: at approx. 10 o'clock to the gilt scrollwork and the tips of the wings on the left-most insect, at approx. 4.30 o'clock to the gilt scrollwork, lustre and a little bit to the right edge of the blue enamel on the figure, and at approx. 3 o'clock to the gilding and lustre. There is also very minor faint rubbing to the fence in the background of the scene and a pin-prick spot to one insect and one flower.

Otherwise generally in very good condition.