Offered by Franck Baptiste Paris
Rare composition in enamelled biscuit from China and finely chiseled and mercury-gilded bronze.
It includes a pair of Buddhist lions called "Fö dogs" harnessed with a gilded bronze palanquin on which rests a small hexagonal vase.
The male whose paw rests on a ball and his female accompanied by her young are in turquoise enamelled biscuit and rest on rectangular bases with an aubergine glaze decorated with "ruyi" heads.
The bases are set in a finely chiseled mount with a guilloche decoration.
They support on their backs a palanquin made up of two carrying bars connected to a central platform covered with fabric; the bars are harnessed with braided ropes ending in lambrequins that surround the lions' necks.
The platform supports a small hexagonal vase with an aubergine glaze imitating basketwork.
Very well preserved; originally on a tray that is now missing.
The enamelled biscuits, China, Jingdezhen province, Kangxi reign around 1700.
The bronze mount, the work of a Parisian merchant-mercer, Louis XVI period around 1780-1790.
Dimensions:
Overall: Height: 19.5 cm; width: 30 cm; depth: 7 cm
Lions: Height: 19 cm
Vase: Height: 6 cm; width: 9.5 cm
Known similar models:
- Perfume fountain of Queen Marie Antoinette seized in 1793 and preserved today at the Louvre Museum under Inventory No. OA7
- Palanquin with dogs by Fö, English Royal Collection Inventory No. RCIN 4925, listed from 1829 at the Brighton Pavilion then at Buckingham Palace from 1847.
- Palanquin with Potpourri, drawing illustrated in the catalog of the sale of the secretary of King Louis-Jean Gaignat in Paris in 1768.
Our opinion:
The composition that we present is one of the most beautiful creations designed by Parisian merchants of the time of Louis XVI.
Wonderfully symbolizing this fantasized Orient, our representation of the ancient Asian means of transport supported by Buddhist lions was very successful among the elite of the nobility at the end of the 18th century.
The model is known from the end of the reign of Louis XV since we find a similar drawing in the sale after the death of the King's secretary Louis-Jean Gaignat in 1768, but it is especially Queen Marie-Antoinette who is crazy about these turquoise biscuits from China who will bring this fashion back into fashion.
It is very likely that Dominique Daguerre who was the greatest supplier of objects to the queen is the author of this fountain, or at least the merchant who marketed it.
The example in the collections also certainly comes from the French royal collections, because we know that a very large majority of the objects from China that appear in the British inventories at the beginning of the 19th century were purchased during the great revolutionary sales of 1793.
As for the model preserved in England, our example has lost its original tray which has not been replaced, it is very difficult for us today to imagine the object as it was delivered in the 18th century, so much were these fragile objects damaged and reworked in the 19th century.
It may have been a potpourri very close to what it remained or perhaps a reworked fountain, in any case it represents the quintessence of the oriental taste of the end of the 18th century and it belongs to an extremely restricted and prestigious group of palanquins.
