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THE LACQUER 18TH CENTURY, THE MOUNTS CIRCA 1780 With two bowls decorated with wooded landscapes separated by a pierced scrolling foliate frieze, headed by a berried finial, on a circular spreading fluted base cast with guilloche; slight differences to the chasing of the different ormolu sections, the base with small pin holes indicating it is a re-used mount re-utilised by a marchand-mercier 10 ? in. (27.5 cm.) high; 5 ? in. (14 cm.) diameter
This exquisite Louis XVI pot-pourri consists of a Japanese bowl and cover, decorated with heraldic emblems (kamon) and bamboo (take) against a nashiji ground and set within finely chased neo-classical ormolu mounts. It is closely related to various precious items in Marie-Antoinette’s fabled collection of Japanese lacquer, the nucleus of which – a group of fifty boxes of various shapes and sizes – had been inherited from her mother Empress Maria Theresia, who died in 1780 (M. Kopplin, Les Laques du Japon; Collections de Marie Antoinette, Paris, 2001, pp. 45-46). Japanese lacquer had already featured in the collection of their ancestor Rudolf II in Prague, where a Namban cabinet is listed in 1607 (S. Castelluccio, Le Gout pour les Laques d’Orient en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle, St. Remy-en-l’Eau, 2019, p. 42). The passion for collecting these precious and costly exotic wares clearly remained an important focus for the Imperial family.
The mounts of the present pot-pourri, particularly the fluted collar, are related to those on the pair of ewers in Marie-Antoinette’s collection, which had probably been purchased in the collection sale in 1777 of M. Randon de Boisset, who had in turn possibly acquired these in Mme de Pompadour’s Collection sale, where they had been listed as ‘deux bouteilles d’ancien lacquer fond noir a mosaique. 120 L’ . M. Kopplin, op. cit., pp. 56-57. Marie-Antoinette’s collection was displayed in her Grand Cabinet Interieur, later known as Cabinet Dore, where they are listed by the marchand-mercier Martin-Eloy Lignereux, Dominique Daguerre’s associate and successor, in October 1789, when the Queen wished to move her most prized and personal works of art into safety.