An Abtsbessingen faience model oven
Triangular model oven fired in one piece. With demi-pilasters dividing the lower section into three. The moulded upper and lower terminals adorned with mascarons and shells. With a central niche flanked by scrolls and moulded upper gable with a large mascaron, shell and urn finial. Marbled niche above a central depiction of Hercules and Omphale, the convex areas with landscapes as allegories of the seasons. Blue mark fork and comb in the upper gable field at the front, blue fork and K at the back. A crack around the urn. H 62 cm.
Around 1750, painted by Johann Gottfried Kiel.
The model has a hole on the back and in the finial so it could be used as a brûle parfum.
Bärninghausen found only two more, albeit smaller, oven models, more sparsely decorated and without the function as brûle parfum.
The motif of Hercules and Omphale is very similar to a mythological scene on a cachepot clearly attributed to the painter J.G. Kiel and dated 1747. The great similarity suggests a contemporary origin of this model.
Provenance
The Lanna Collection, Prague, cat. Berlin 1909, no. 1144, ill. plate 82.
The Jahn Collection, sold Lempertz Cologne auction 689 on 13 May 1993, lot 332.
Private collection, Rhineland.
Literature
Published in Bärninghausen, Abtsbessinger Fayencen, Rudolstadt 1997, p. 59 ff. no. 3.
Exhibitions
Thüringer Landesmuseum Heidecksburg Rudolstadt 15 February - 24 April 1997.