Page 51 - Chinese Export Art Christie's New York, Jan 21, 2016

THE SOWELL COLLECTION

87 (2)
A BOAR’S HEAD TUREEN AND COVER
CIRCA 1770
The beast with open jaws revealing tusks and tongue

11 in. (28 cm.) high, 15 º in. (39 cm.) long

$40,000-60,000

PROVENANCE:

With Cohen & Cohen, London

LITERATURE:

op. cit., pp. 184-185, no. 12.5

A boar’s head of this model from the collection of Mrs. Lammot
du Pont Copeland is in the Peabody Essex Museum and illustrated
by W.R. Sargent, The Copeland Collection, p. 202, where the author
notes that the records of the Dutch East India Company document
an order of 25 boar’s head tureens in the 1763 season. In 1764
nineteen were shipped home to Holland but a further order was
not fulfilled because “the supercargoes considered them too risky.”
Fennimore and Halfpenny (The Campbell Collection of Soup Tureens
at Winterthur, p.148) show a Chelsea example, quoting a Chelsea
factory auction catalogue of March 18, 1755 listing “a very curious
TUREEN in the form of a BOAR’S HEAD”. Whether Chinese
porcelain or European pottery, boar’s head tureens must have made
an impressive effect on the dining table, especially when filled with
hot stew emitting clouds of steam through the snout.

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