Page 18 - Mounted Oriental Porcelain, The Getty Museum

any quantity until much later, the first large cargo dock-
22
ing at Amsterdam in i659. The blue-and-white wares
of the Ming dynasty reached Europe in considerable
quantities in Portuguese and Spanish carracas. 23 A curi-
ous drawing in pen and ink by Diirer, dating from about
1510 to 1515 and now in the British Museum, shows
two elaborately complex columns whose tall shafts each
incorporate a Chinese vase with metal mounts of Euro- FIGURE 4. (left) Bowl of Chinese celadon porcelain of the Ming
dynasty mounted as a lidded cup. The mounts are of German silver-
pean design (fig. 5). Although Diirer himself had pur-
gilt and date from shortly before 1453. They bear the arms of Philip,
chased oriental porcelain in Antwerp, these are clearly count of Katzenellenbogen. This is the earliest example of oriental
fantastic creations of the artist's imagination rather than porcelain to survive complete with its European mounts. Kassel,
records of anything he had seen. Nevertheless, they sug- Staatliche Kunstsammlungen.
gest that mounting oriental porcelain had already taken
a firm hold on men's minds. FIGURE 5. (right] Albrecht Diirer (1471-1528). Drawing of a pair
In England particularly, mounted porcelain was of fantastic columns, each incorporating a vase of Chinese porcelain
highly prized during this period. The earliest recorded with European mounts. Pen and ink, dating from 1510-1515.
London, © The British Museum.
Chinese porcelain to have reached that country was pre-
sented by Philip of Austria to Sir Thomas Trenchard in
1506 in gratitude for the entertainment of his wife and
himself when they were shipwrecked off the coast of
Dorset. One of these pieces was mounted in silver-gilt
later in the century. 24
In 1530, Archbishop Warham presented New Col-
lege with a celadon bowl of the Ming period that had
been mounted in silver (fig. 6). It is one of Oxford Univer-

I N T R O D U C T I O N 5