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A VERY RARE FAMILLE ROSE ‘DUTCH TOPER’ SPIRIT BARREL
Qianlong
Finely modelled as a seated Bacchanalian drinker, with cheerful
expression between curly locks beneath a tricorn hat with lid, his
hands holding his round belly as he merrily chuckles, the jacket with
gold buttons and trousers finely decorated with distinctively Chinese
designs of bamboo, butterflies and prunus, his seat decorated with
auspicious bats among ruyi-head clouds, a round handle attached to
his back and European metal tap issuing from the front of his seat.
34.5cm (13 1/2in) high

£10,000 - 15,000
HK$110,000 - 160,000 CNY92,000 - 140,000
清乾隆 粉彩洋人抱腹蓄水壺
It is extremely rare to find Chinese examples of cisterns modelled after
European table fountains made in the 18th century. Spirit dispensing
cisterns modelled as ‘topers’ or drinkers, were produced in Delft,
Brussels, and at Rouen, France. The English ‘Toby jug’ was also
related.
For a similar Chinese famille rose spirit barrel next to the Delft original,
see D.Howard and J.Ayers, China for the West: Chinese Porcelain
and other Decorative Arts for Export illustrated from the Mottahedeh
Collection, New York, 1978, p.620, where the author comments that
‘Bacchic figures seated on barrels used as spirit flasks were also
typical of Delft and other north European potteries of this time (they
were even copied in Japanese porcelain), and this development can
be traced back to the time of the Renaissance.’

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