Page 14 - Mounted Oriental Porcelain Getty Museum
P. 14
INTRODUCTION
A wide variety of ceramic wares—English, the porcelains which were mounted in silver in consider-
French, German, and Italian—from the able quantity during the reign of Louis xiv (see cata-
.Near and Far East, as well as vessels of logue nos. 4 and 6) are rare. Probably the mounts of
glass, rock crystal, and hardstones, have been enriched many of these oriental pieces were removed and melted
with metal mounts in the course of European history. down when such things had ceased to be fashionable.3
However, the collection catalogued here consists almost
exclusively of Chinese and Japanese porcelains mounted Far Eastern porcelains were also mounted in coun-
in Paris during the reigns of Louis xiv (1643-1715) and tries other than France. In Holland, much porcelain was
Louis xv (1715-1774). In the majority of cases, the enriched in this way during the seventeenth century
mounts date from around the two middle decades of the (though much less in the following centuries) and is
eighteenth century. These facts call for some explanation. sometimes depicted in Dutch paintings of the period.
The practice of mounting oriental porcelain in Eu- Mounts were also applied to porcelains in Germany,
rope dates back at least to the Middle Ages, and pieces more frequently to copies of oriental pieces. Neverthe-
so mounted survive from the early Renaissance. These less, more Meissen porcelain was in fact mounted in
mounts were a tribute not so much to the beauty of the Paris than in Saxony itself. Examples of Chinese porce-
porcelains as to the extreme rarity of the material.1 lain with Venetian mounts are known, but they too are
When, in the second half of the seventeenth century, ori- very few. In England, mounts were occasionally applied
ental works of art began to reach Europe in considerable to Chelsea and other native wares and, though rarely, to
quantities, they continued to be mounted in precious or Chinese and Japanese porcelain (see catalogue no. i).4
semiprecious metals (generally silver or silver-gilt), but Englishmen such as Lord Bolingbroke, who collected
it was their exotic character rather than their rarity that such things, mostly purchased their mounted porcelain
now excited interest. By the middle of the eighteenth in Paris.5 In effect, the history of mounted oriental porce-
century, lachine2 was the height of fashion in Paris, the lain in the eighteenth century, which might justly be
generally acknowledged focal point of European taste at called the golden age of mounted porcelain, is, for all
the time. Without question, more oriental porcelain was practical purposes, the history of porcelain mounted
set in metal mounts (by this date, generally of gilt bronze) in Paris.
of European design, in Paris, between 1740 and 1760
than at any other period in the world's history. Conse- Whatever may have been the intention in earlier
quently, more examples from this period have survived epochs, during the eighteenth century the main reason
into the modern world. for setting these oriental objects in mounts of European
Pieces mounted during the Middle Ages are virtu- design was to naturalize them to the decoration of French
ally nonexistent today; we know of them only from de-
scriptions in early inventories. A few pieces mounted interiors of the period; i.e., to modify their exotic char-
during the Renaissance survive, but they are exceedingly acter by giving them a quasi-French appearance.6 The
rare; only a handful are found in the United States. Even men who devised these pretty things for the rich, extrava-
gant, and sophisticated society of eighteenth-century
Paris were, to some degree, the equivalent of modern
interior decorators, but they were not the makers of the
i
