388.
A TURQUOISE-GLAZED CONCH SHELL CONTAINER
Qing dynasty, first half of the 18th century
13 x 18 cm high
Provenance: Naples, Villa della Floridiana, Museo Duca di Martina, Placido de Sangro (1829-1891) collection.
inv. n. 3756.
A pair of very similar containers with a mid eighteenth century French gilt bronze mount is in the British Royal Collection (J. Ayers, Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, 2 voll. London 2016, II, nn. 1431-1432): the finial of the covers has been replaced with a removable turquoise-glazed figure of Budai of the same type of the two figures in the Duca di Martina collection; see also the comparable pair with a gilt bronze mount in the Walters Art Gallery of Baltimore (D.F. Lunsingh Scheurleer, Chinesisches und japanisches Porzellan in europäischen Fassungen, Braunschweig 1980, p. 312, n. 283). The similar piece in the Rijksmuseum is associated with a turquoise-glazed leaf-shaped tray with a moulded decoration of a dragon (J. Van Campen, Supplement to Chinese ceramics in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The Ming and Qing dynasties, in collaboration with C.J.A. Jörg, Amsterdam 1997, p. 63, n. 785).
The naturalistic shape of the conch shell was also in the repertory of the Japanese ceramists who made around 1700 this kind of containers explicitly for the European market, as exemplified by the pair in the collection of the Wittelsbacher in the Munich Residenz (F. Ulrichs, Die ostasiatische Porzellansammlung der Wittelsbacher in der Residenz München, Munich 2005, p. 57).
