Fine Chinese Porcelain From The Collection Of Augustus The Strong

So today we talk about two very special pieces from the personal collection of this gentleman here, of this king, Augustus Stark, Augustus Strong, who lived from 1670 to 1733. Both pieces are from his personal collection and they come up at this auction in October 16, and one is lot number 160. It's published here in the catalog. And the other one is lot number 161, also published in the catalog. Now, Augustus Stark, Augustus Strong, who owned these pieces and many more, he was a real fan of Chinese porcelain. And the thing is, he was also very rich because Saxony was incredibly wealthy back in the day and he had his own imperial workshops that did a lot of things for him. If you go to Dresden, which was the capital back in the day, you go to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen and the Grüne Gewölbe, you see a huge array of artworks that were made. I can really recommend the trip. It's one of the best museums in the world. And you can see what they did back in the day under Augustus Strong's guidance. Now, when Augustus Strong came across Chinese porcelain, he went mad and he said, why can't we do these things? And he started to collect it and it was coming over from China. And he eventually found out that kaolin, which is the material that is essential for the production of the white gold porcelain, as it was called back in the day, there was a pretty strong deposits in the area of Meissen, which was part of Saxony. And it still is, by the way. You guessed it by now, he was also the person who started porcelain production in Meissen, the world's most famous porcelain manufacturer today. Meissen in Meissen near Dresden in Saxony. But he loved Chinese porcelain because it was so fine and refined and the quality of the white ware was so exceptional. We're talking about the late Kangxi and early Yongzheng era. Those are Yongzheng pieces from 1725 to 1730. The thing about all the August pieces is that they have certain engravings to the base. They are called yuanyong marks. The reason why they have these inventory marks is because long after August passed away, most of the pieces, at least the most important ones, were transferred to Austria by the Habsburgs to Graz, to the Yuanyong Museum. And that's where those numbers were engraved. And that's why these porcelains are called the Yuanyong porcelains or the Yuanyong mark porcelains, which has nothing to do with August because he was long by that time. We have these old inventories from the time of August the Strong. You can see there's one here for the dish and there is one here for the vase that date from 1721 and 1727. Here is the dish. Yeah, we'll start with this one. It's quite spectacular. It's a family rose dish, the largest of this group. They existed in numbers. The smaller ones, the large ones, are very rare. And what is even more rare is when they have this beautiful subject of Maku holding a gilt lingzhi and with the blossoming prunus tree on top of her and the boy next to her carrying a bag on the lingzhi staff above his shoulder and also accompanied by a deer on her right side. This is all painted in high relief in brilliant enamels with exceptionally fine detail. This dish is in perfect condition. It has some surface rubbings, but otherwise it's the enamels are extremely well preserved. There's no restoration. There's no cracks. There's nothing. This is just absolutely perfect. Look at the back side. You have your Neom Spark impressed here and an old collector's label. This is, of course, very large in size. It has 44 centimeters in diameter, almost half a meter. Most of these are broken when you find them. There was one identical one that was sold at Sotheby's for 50,000 euros in 21, four years ago. This one was previously at Leinert Turnbull a couple of years ago where it sold for 59,000 and it's now back on the market and we started at 15,000 euros. It has no reserves. It currently offered at 25% of what it sold only a few years ago. Really nice condition and very rare. The even more spectacular piece is this vase here. It's the counterpart of the pear to one that was in the Pilkington collection some time ago here in 2016 at Sotheby's. It's the identical piece. You can see it. There is only two that ever came on the market that do not only have this perfectly refined whiteware that by itself is very, very rare, but they also have these three beasts here nicely painted in peach bloom glaze with all the variations that you have in peach bloom, which is so famous in the Concierge and Jungeng areas, a deep copper red varying to some kind of liver red. You have it here. Then they made the eyes in cobalt blue, which they had at the time, which is a really nice detail, but it's very, very difficult to fire cobalt blue together with peach bloom. Temperatures are different. Cooling down will turn the copper into all kinds of colors, but not the one that you want to achieve. So it gets tricky. And on top of that, they painted the animals here, the mythical animals, all three of them in almost excessive gilding. There's a lot of it and it's really nicely painted as they did in these days. Of course, it's worn off in like 99% of the pieces that have been on the market ever since. Not on this one and not on the one in the Pilkington Collection, to which this one is most likely the pair. The one in the Pilkington Collection sold for 326,000 euros in 2016. We are starting this one at 30,000 euros. Of course, there's no reserve, so it will sell. And I think if you like bases for vases, this is probably at least one of the best bases that I have ever seen. It has two different inventory numbers from earlier collections that have been lacquered to it. It has the Euro Neon number with the arrow and it's nicely cut off here, neatly incurved. That's probably the most beautiful base that I've seen in at least a decade. The vase is slightly leaning, but only slightly, so when you turn it, it comes into the right position. The vase is in absolutely perfect condition. It's been like that for 300 years. We try to keep it that way. Even the gilt on the lip is still preserved. And yes, there is of course another pair to it and still in the August der Starke Collection in Dresden. That's the one. And then here, there are two variations of it also in the Stadl Hekunst Museum, but these lack the gilding, which is so rare. So there are only three examples in the world that have the gilding. It's this one in the museum, this one in the Pickington Collection, and this one. If you want to acquire it, the auction is on October 16th. Good luck in bidding.