A VERY IMPORTANT and documentary Bottger Meissen tea and coffee set, C.1720/3

Decorated by Abraham Seuter almost at the same time as the Böttger porcelain. I have seen the odd piece of this turn up in a very fine sale, and indeed, please see just a single coffeepot sold by Christies London for £7,500 plus 30% on top premium., a teapot for £8,750 and a teacaddy for £8,125. Link here https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-a-meissen-goldchinesen-baluster-coffee-pot-and-cover-5024616/?from=salesummary&intObjectID=5024616&lid=1 A tea bowl and saucer marked SL was in the Pauls Eisenbass collection - see German Porcelain of the 18th century by Erica Pauls-Eisenbass, Barry & Jenkins (1972 p392), a similar hunting themed service was sold at Sotheby's 2003 Lot 9 the so-called Schimmerlmann service.

I have never seen an ORIGINAL almost complete set. The subject is also rare. Also, I have never seen a signed piece of Bottger or Meissen porcelain like this. My set is in EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD condition. THE IDENTICAL LUSTRE MARKS ON ALMOST ALL PIECES RE-INFORCES THE UNITY OF THE SERVICE FROM 300 YEARS AGO. AMAZING.

Originally, I bought this wonderful set from an American general antique dealer, who found it at a large house in a back room. He had been called in to open this jammed door to a room packed full of things.

Each piece with tooled gilt European landscape and hunting scenes above a scrollwork bracket and beneath a gilt-bordered rim edged in small C-scrolls and dots. Many after engravings by Johann Elias Ridinger (1698-1767), and enhanced with birds on branches, butterflies and other insects. The service comprises:-

A compressed pear-shaped silver-gilt-mounted teapot and domed cover with mushroom finial. The tip covered with a silver hinged mount, the looped handle with a collar, both mounts joined to a ring around the finial with chains [Hight: 4.5 in. (11.4cm.)];

A silver-gilt-mounted coffee pot and domed hinged cover with thumb-piece, the spout with a silver cover [Height 7.5 in. (19cm.)]; the silver mounts with maker's mark of Elias Adam, Augsburg.

An oval sugar box and stepped cover with mushroom finial;

A baluster hexagonal tea caddy and cover This is a most charming piece, as it is leaning slightly to one side as made in the original firing, and in it's way, my favourite piece. Very common on such early Bottger porcelain. Height 4 in. (10.1cm)];

Four STUNNING tea bowls and saucers. ALL SUPERBLY BRIGHT AND EXCELLENT CONDITION.

The pot handles and spouts fully gilded, marks in orange lustre to all pieces except the tea caddy which has an unglazed base. The LS more than likely fired off in the firing. Some areas of wear to all pieces.

Here is some more very interesting info I have found.

The definitive treatise on the Augsburg Hausmaler, among the most celebrated outside decorators of Meissen porcelain in the first half of the 18th century, remains Siegfried Ducret's Meissner Porzellan bemalt in Augsburg, 1718 bis um 1750. Many pieces of the forms and with very similar gilt scenes as on this service are illustrated in Volume I, which Ducret attributes to Abraham Seuter (1689-1747) who, along with his brother Bartholomäus Seuter, gilded Meissen porcelain from about 1722 until 1747. The Meissen manufactory had a close connection to the Augsburg workshops, famous as a goldsmith center, shipping undecorated porcelain overland for decoration. Chinoiserie (Goldchinesen) or more rarely hunting landscape scenes - hunting an important pastime of the Saxon court - were the customary themes of decoration. A closely related hunting-themed service, the so-called Schimmelmann Service, was sold at Sotheby's, London, December 2, 2003, lot 9. Ducret illustrates a Seuter-decorated tea and coffee service - shown in its original leather traveling case - in his treatise cited above, p. 191, Pl. 211. An Augsburg-decorated Goldchinesen tea and coffee service was sold at Sotheby's, New York, October 20, 1994, lot 382. Another was sold at Sotheby's, Geneva, November 9, 1987, lots 228-236. A similar teapot, tea caddy, and a pair of teabowls and saucers - all with Goldchinesen - were sold at Christie's, London, December 11, 2007, lots 42, 44, and 46. A related silver-mounted coffee pot with hunting scenes decorated in black in Augsburg, was sold at Bonhams, London, March 20, 2013, lot 9. The mushroom finials on the teapot and sugar box point to a relatively early date of manufacture of the porcelain and, despite some variation in bracket pattern,

Meissen Porcelain