A Meissen porcelain spice dish formed as a ship
With fire-gilt bronze and gilt tin mountings. Vessel modelled as a ship with riveted planks painted with insects and with a lion figurehead. The sailor sits at the stern holding the rudder in both hands. The hollow front section divided into two compartments and covered by an engraved gilt bronze panel containing two further compartments beneath round covers with coiled rope handles and supporting a mast with a billowing sail. The ship is screwed onto the oval bronze rocaille base in the centre. Blue crossed swords mark to the hull. One sail loose (included), the head and left arm reattached, the rudder restored. H 21, L 17.2, W 11 cm.
Circa 1743 - 45, the model by Johann Friedrich Eberlein and Johann Gottlieb Ehder.
Literature
An identical ship, also mounted in bronze, from the Jahn collection was sold in Lempertz Cologne auction 641 on 12th June 1989, lot 223.
Cf. a sailing ship model with brown studs formerly housed in the Budge collection and sold in Graupe/Berlin on September 1927, lot 738.
Cf. also cat.: Sammlung Pauls Riehen, Frankfurt 1967, vol. I, p. 153.
Cf. also Rückert, Meissener Porzellan, Munich 1966, no. 967, this example in the collection of Dr. Ernst Schneider.
Rückert lists several mentions of this model in the archives, beginning with an entry by Johann Friedrich Eberlein from January 1739 mentioning the production of a model ship. Later an entry by Johann Gottlieb Ehder from August 1743 which mentions the creation of a sailor figure for the royal confectioners, and a further entry from September of the same year mentioning a further figure of a sailor for "the above mentioned ship" (Rückert, p. 180).