Chope de Meissen, décor attribué à Ignaz Bottengruber

A Meissen Hausmaler tankard decoration attributed to Ignaz Bottengruber

Painted by Ignaz Bottengruber in Breslau, with elaborate gilt strap- and scrollwork edged in iron-red festooned with large polychrome flowers and two putti in drapery clothes feeding larger birds, all surrounding a central mythological scene of Poseidon and Amphitrite, the domed gilt-metal-mounted cover with an inset with a silver coin of the 'drei gute Regeln' 15cm high, 19cm including thumbpiece the silver mount on the foot with several unidentifiable discharge marks, (restored crack)
Footnotes:
Provenance
Pauls-Eisenbeiss Collection, Riehen, sold Christie's Geneva, 30 April 1975, lot 227;
The Rosa Alba Collection.

Literature
E. Köllman/L. Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Porzellan der europäischen Fabriken, II (1956), p. 152

A pair of rare bottles from the workshop of Ignaz Bottengruber, previously in the collection of Heinrich Rothberger, sold at Bonhams, New Bond Street, 3 December 2020, lot 59.

For a discussion of Ignaz Bottengruber, who was active as a Hausmaler between 1721 and at least 1728 in Breslau, and around 1730 in Vienna, see M. Cassidy-Geiger, The Porcelain Decoration of Ignaz Bottengruber, in Metropolitan Museum Journal 33 (1998), pp. 245-262, and fig. 35 for a very similar pair of flasks in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg (inv. no. 1927.271). The few surviving signed and dated examples of his work are all between 1726 and 1730. Several other examples of this bottle form decorated by Bottengruber are recorded, including a pair painted with military trophies (published by G. Pazaurek, Deutsche Fayence- und Porzellan-Hausmaler, I (1925), col. pl. 13 - then in the Georg Tillmann Collection, Hamburg); and a single example also with military trophies in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Cassidy-Geiger, fig. 17). Numerous bottles, including Baumölflaschchen are recorded in the weekly reports of the Meissen formers and turners around 1725; see C. Boltz, Die wöchentlichen Berichte über die Tätigkeit der Meissner Dreher und Former vom 6. Juni 1722 bis 31. Dezember 1728, in Keramos 178 (2002), p. 22 and p. 59. It is interesting that almost all the recorded examples of this form - another is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (probably decorated by Sabina Aufenwerth) - are decorated by Hausmaler; the only recorded example with factory decoration of underglaze-blue scrollwork and polychrome chinoiserie figures in the style of J.E. Stadler was in the C.H. Fischer Collection, Dresden (sold at Sotheby's London, 2 March 1994, lot 12).

Overall in good condition with some wear to the enamel colours and gilding. There is a very well restored tight haircrack running through the base and at 2/3ds of the body about 3cm removed from the handle. It is fainly visible with the eye but more clearly visible under UV. No other damage noted.