A Meissen porcelain spice dish formed as a ship
Designed as a ship with moulded planks and rivets, finely painted with insects, with a lion figurehead and a sailor siting at the stern. The front of the deck hollowed out and separated into two compartments. Blue crossed swords mark on the rudder, unglazed base. Restored. H 11, W 15.5 cm.
C. 1743 - 45, model by Johann Friedrich Eberlein and Johann Gottlieb Ehder.
Provenance
Private collection, Westphalia.
Literature
An identical ship mounted in bronze in the Jahn collection, auctioned by Lempertz Cologne auction 641 on 12th June 1989, lot 223. A further example without the bronze mountings ibid. lot 224.
Cf. also a ship with brown rivets formerly housed in the Budge collection auctioned by Graupe/Berlin in 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: "1 Schälgen wir ein Schiffgen zum Modell in Maßa verputzet", then Johann Gottlieb Ehder in August 1743: "1 klein Figürgen in Gestalt eines Schiffsknechtes zur Conditorey Sr. Hoch Reichs Gräfl. Excellenz neu bossirt" and again in September 1743: "1 Schiffsknecht zu obigem Schiffgen neu bossirt" (Rückert, p. 180).