Page 52 - Mounted Oriental Porcelain, The Getty Museum

F I G . 5B

mark struck. It remained for Pierre Verlet to confirm A pair of lidded jars, of almost identical shape and
this hypothesis by demonstrating that the familiar mounting, was sold in Paris in 1978. 6 The strapwork
crowned C had been struck on the mounts of a chimney mounts of these jars are similar in design to those of sil­
piece at Versailles that could be shown to have been ver on the Imari bowls (see catalogue nos. 4 and 6). It is
ordered in 1748. Earlier it had been suggested that the possible that they were designed by the same artist but
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mark was a signature or a maker's mark, the names of made, necessarily, by craftsmen in different guilds using
Cressent and Caffieri being suggested amongst others. the same source of design.
The edict was canceled by the Parlement in 1749. A variant of this vertical mount including a female
It has often been supposed that the presence of such a mask can be seen on a single lidded jar at the Chateau of
mark indicates that the marked piece was actually Vaux-le-Vicomte 7 and on another in the Residenzmu-
made during the short span of four years when the tax seum, Munich. 8 A similarly mounted pair was sold in
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was in force. It can, however, be seen from the wording Paris in 19 87, and a single straight-sided vase was sold
of the edict that the tax was levied on old metalwork as in London in 1999. 1 0
well as on new. A chandelier n the Getty Museum, 4
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stylistically datable to about 1710, is struck on each of PUBLICATIONS
its component parts with the tax stamp; and the gilt- Wilson 1977, p. 14, no. 14; Lunsingh Scheurleer
bronze hinges of a late-seventeenth-century cabinet in 1980, p. 250, no. 151; Watson 1980, p. 27, no. 3;
the Wallace Collection 5 are also struck with the stamp. Bremer-David et al. 1993, P- 49? n o - 4^-
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P A I R O F L I D D E D J A R S 39