A Meissen 'Augustus Rex' hexagonal vase and cover, the porcelain circa 1730, the decoration perhaps somewhat later - Photo Sotheby's
the sides painted in Kakiemon style with black cranes perched among peonies, alternating with flowering peony bushes, the shoulders and cover with three reserves of phoenix on a broad tomato-red ground band of scrolling lotus, the neck with a key-fret border, 'underglaze' blue AR mark overpainted in blue and black enamel with a peony flowerhead, blue enamel caduceus mark; 32cm, 12 1/2 in high. Estimation: 40,000 - 60,000 GBP
NOTE DE CATALOGUE: Factory records show that twenty-six examples of this vase were ordered by Augustus the Strong for his Japanese Palace at Dresden between 1728 and 1730; all twenty-six were still in Dresden at the time of the 1779 inventory(listed under inventory number 327 as 'twenty-six pieces diverse 6-cornered bottles').
The Augustus Rex initial mark was used exclusively to mark pieces intended for Augustus the Strong's two Dresden palaces. However, it was an 'underglaze' blue mark; i.e. it was put on first, before the undecorated piece was fired for the first time. In the kiln, the larger or heavier of these pieces were often difficult to fire, and many developed faults or firing cracks. A considerable number of these pieces were therefore held back and put into store - from which they were extracted over a period of years afterwards, to be decorated and sold to the general public.
It follows that anything with an AR mark is either a piece made and decorated for one of the Royal palaces for the King, or it is decorated at some later date, perhaps a year or two later, perhaps even thirty or more. Difficulties of exact dating of these pieces and of assessment of their importance and value are therefore common, and can boil down to a matter of expert opinion.
The present vase is more intriguing than most, in that its 'AR' mark has been deliberately obscured, and then a caduceus mark (an uncommonly-found alternative factory mark of around 1722-1730) added. It is hard to imagine why the factory would obscure its own mark. On the other hand, it is equally difficult to explain why an outside or later decorator would cover up a mark that he would surely be glad to find on the piece.
A third possibility would be the involvement of Rudolphe Lemaire. He held a trusted position at the factory, and was found to have been creaming off a lot of pieces, and ordering special pieces, which he caused to be smuggled out of the factory and sold for his own benefit. Mostly, these pieces were deliberately made without a mark – it seems he was passing them off in Paris as the genuine Japanese article. When he was caught, many hundreds of pieces were returned to the factory, there to be marked with the crossed swords in enamel. The theory here is that he might have got hold of this piece from the store, already AR marked, and had it decorated in Japanese style and the mark obscured, to be passed off as Japanese. It is an interesting theory, but there is no actual evidence, or precedent, for it.
There is certainly no other example of this form with the caduceus mark, or with the AR mark obscured. One might also note that this seems to be the only example of the type with the big cranes' bodies in this striking black enamel; the birds seem to be brown on every other example of this pattern; see the Japanese and Meissen examples in the Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden, illustrated together by U. Pietsch and C. Banz, Triumph of the Blue Swords, p.255 no. 195.
Sotheby's. Arts of Europe. London | 04 déc. 2012 www.sothebys.com