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MID-18TH CENTURY Each with a pierced domed cover with flowerhead finial and foliate frieze, above a lobed lacquer body decorated with lotus flowers surrounded by scrolling herb motif, on naturalistic flowering branch bases 6 ? in. (17 cm.) high; 5 in. (12.5 cm.) wide
These precious pot-pourris are richly decorated with gilt and burnished mounts in the shape of branches, twigs and leaves around a lobed Japanese lacquer body embellished with a herb motif (karakusa). They typify the fashion for the most precious mounted objects (bronzes d’ameublement), developed by marchand-merciers from the early 18th century onwards, most frequently employing Oriental and European porcelain and Chinese and Japanese lacquer to a lesser extent. And indeed, Stephane Castellucio explains in ‘Le Gout pour les Laques d’Orient en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle, St. Remy-en-l’Eau, 2019, p. 208, that exotic lacquer was only rarely fitted with gilt-bronze mounts before 1760: in the Collection of Mme de Pompadour only one lacquer item in seven was fitted with mounts, in Randon de Boisset’s collection, only one in nine.
The leaf base mounts – possibly pumpkin leaves - of the present pots-pourris are closely related to those on two fruit-shaped boxes from the Collection of Eugene Dutruit, left to the City of Paris in 1902 and now exhibited at the Petit Palais. A further, similarly-mounted object, was in the Collection Denon (sale January 1827), subsequently in the Collection of the duchesse de Montebello (sale March 1857) and then in the celebrated Collection of Adolphe Thiers, left by his widow to the Louvre in 1881 (G. Lacambre (ed.), L’Or du Japon, Bourg-en-Bresse, 2010, pp. 126-127 . These objects have lacquer bodies in the form of globular fruit, either a pear or apple (kaki); the present items, circular tubs with five lobes, were possibly transformed from teapots such as the early 18th century examples illustrated in O. Impey, ‘Japanese Export Lacquer 1580-1850’, Amsterdam, 2005, pp. 197-199.
The celebrated Collection of Japanese lacquer belonging to Marie-Antoinette – largely formed with the nucleus inherited from Empress Maria Theresia in 1780 – included various related fruit-shaped boxes, which are recorded in 1789 in the Cabinet Dore at Versailles. These were not fitted with gilt-bronze mounts contrary to some other, larger items which were further enriched with delicate gilt-bronze mounts. The Queen’s group of fruit-shaped lacquer boxes included a melon (shiro-uri), a peach (momo), and a pair of uri, an apple shaped fruit (M. Kopplin, Les Laques du Japon; Collections de Marie Antoinette, Paris, 2001, pp. 152-155, 170-171).