Pair of Magenta Vienna Porcelain Exhibition Vases

Object Description

An Important and Extremely Large Pair of Magenta Ground Vienna Porcelain Exhibition Vases.

Each vase with blue underglazed ‘Beehive’ mark to interior of neck.

Each vase is finely painted with classical scenes to the front and allegorical scenes to the back on a rich magenta ground with gilt foliate decoration. The vases are mounted by extraordinary gilt handles headed by winged female masks to the sides and grotesque masks to the shoulders. The spreading necks decorated with Greek key decoration are surmounted by domed covers and the vases are raised on baluster form supports put down on drum bases finely painted with panels stylised arabesque.

Object History

The Vienna Porcelain Manufactory was founded in 1718 only eight years after Johann Friedrich Bottger and Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus had succeeded in unearthing the secret of Porcelain Manufacture for August the Strong, Elector of Saxony. On May 25, 1718, Emperor Karl VI signed a “special privilege” awarding Claudius Innocentius du Paquier the exclusive right to produce porcelain in the Austrian crown lands. Production being almost exclusively for the imperial household and the court nobility.

During the rococo era, Empress Maria Theresia placed the company under imperial ownership and it was during this period that the manufactory began to produce the famous rococo genre scenes after Watteau. Under the management of Conrad Sorgel von Sorgenthal, the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory achieved an international reputation for its neo-classical style.

After the wars with France brought the manufactory to the brink of ruin, the Vienna Congress at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century gave porcelain from Vienna a renewed upswing. Many important personalities of the time, including Czar Alexander I of Russia and the King of Prussia, were guests of the manufactory and porcelain from Vienna became highly regarded once again.

Object Details