Beschreibung:

R. Lalique clear glass "Baccantes" vase
Decorated probably in the workshop of Abraham Seuter almost contemporaneously with the Böttger porcelain, 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 curved spout with a gilt mask terminal, 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 [H: 4.5 in. (11.4cm.)]; a silver-gilt-mounted pear-shaped coffee pot and domed hinged cover (finial replaced) with thumb-piece, the spout with a silver cover [H: 7.5 in. (19cm.)]; the 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 (finial replaced) [H: 4 in. (10.1cm)]; and four teabowls and saucers. The pot handles and spouts fully gilded, "LS" marks in orange lustre to all pieces except the tea caddy which has an unglazed base, some areas of wear to all pieces. 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, identical lustre marks on almost all pieces reinforces the unity of the service. Our thanks to Malcolm D. Gutter, Professor Emeritus of Decorative Arts, Foothill College, California, and University of California, Berkeley Extension, for his help in research and cataloging of this lot.