Page 69 - Christie;es Marchant January 18 2018

MARCHANT, EST. 1925

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A LARGE VERTE-IMARI MONTEITH
QIANLONG PERIOD, CIRCA 1740
Brightly painted on each side with large blooms growing from blue
rockwork, smaller sprays on the sides, the lappets foral-decorated
on each side, the inside with matching foral decoration
20º (51.5 cm.) wide
$50,000-80,000
PROVENANCE
Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, Monaco, 5 March 1989, lot 331.
The Collection of Benjamin Edwards III; Christie’s, New York,
26 January 2010, lot 47.
This monumental basin would have been intended for the chilling of
whole bottles, while the more familiar, smaller, round form was used
for icing glasses. The crenellated rims frst appear in English silver of
the 1680s, named after an eccentric Scot, Lord Monteith, who wore
his cloak hem notched in this fashion. By about 1710 the Dutch were
producing monteith bowls in Delftware.
Five related examples are published; this may have been a set of
six made to stand around a great dining room. A pair from the
collection of a European noble family was sold Christie’s, London,
16 December 1996, lot 293. A single in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and illustrated in Oriental Ceramics,
The World’s Great Collections, vol. 11, pl. 25. Another single is
illustrated by Beurdeley, op. cit., cat. 52, and a fnal single, reputedly
from the collection of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, was
exhibited by Cohen & Cohen in Now and Then, November 2005,
no. 13. These monteiths are among the most monumental and
impressive porcelains ever made for the China trade.

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