Page 18 - Mounted Oriental Porcelain Getty Museum

any quantity until much later, the first large cargo dock- FIGURE 4. (left) Bowl of Chinese celadon porcelain of the Ming
ing at Amsterdam in i659.22 The blue-and-white wares dynasty mounted as a lidded cup. The mounts are of German silver-
of the Ming dynasty reached Europe in considerable gilt and date from shortly before 1453. They bear the arms of Philip,
quantities in Portuguese and Spanish carracas.23 A curi- count of Katzenellenbogen. This is the earliest example of oriental
ous drawing in pen and ink by Diirer, dating from about porcelain to survive complete with its European mounts. Kassel,
1510 to 1515 and now in the British Museum, shows Staatliche Kunstsammlungen.
two elaborately complex columns whose tall shafts each
incorporate a Chinese vase with metal mounts of Euro- FIGURE 5. (right] Albrecht Diirer (1471-1528). Drawing of a pair
pean design (fig. 5). Although Diirer himself had pur- of fantastic columns, each incorporating a vase of Chinese porcelain
chased oriental porcelain in Antwerp, these are clearly with European mounts. Pen and ink, dating from 1510-1515.
fantastic creations of the artist's imagination rather than London, © The British Museum.
records of anything he had seen. Nevertheless, they sug-
gest that mounting oriental porcelain had already taken
a firm hold on men's minds.

In England particularly, mounted porcelain was
highly prized during this period. The earliest recorded
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-

INTRODUCTION 5