A CHINESE EXPORT ARMORIAL APOTHECARY JAR circa 1710

painted on the front of the cylindrical body in a famille-verte palette heightened in gilding with an imperial eagle, a crown between the bird's two heads and swords clasped in his talons, all between entwined thorny branches bearing fruit and leaves.  Rim reduced, small hair crack.

San Francisco, Fall Antiques Show, 1995
New York, International Asian Art Fair, 2002

Exterior rim with 5/8-inch forked haircrack, visible for 1 inch on the interior: rim reduced: fritting around lower ridge; minute chip just above foot rim.
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According to Krahl and Harrison-Hall, "the double-headed eagle as represented on this jar...is the heraldic bird of the Austrian Empire.  There is no indication, however, of an Austrian order of such jars, [and] the majority of extant jars of this type, as well as matching ewers for liquid medicine, appears to be preserved in Russia, both in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, and in the State Historical Museum, Moscow....This set is believed to have been made for Peter I's ["the Great" (1672-1725)] (r. 1682-1725) Moscow pharmacy, which in 1710 is recorded to have been stocked with jars bearing the imperial Russian eagle, [although it is quite possible that] the jars in Moscow in 1710 may have been different ones, possibly made of European faïence or glass."

Three apothecary jars, including a covered wet drug jar and a pair of albarelli of the present model, identically decorated, are illustrated by Beurdeley, p. 125, pl. XXIII, who on p. 126 comments on the assumption of their having been ordered for Peter "The Great's" pharmacy, that "these three jars are proof of the great interest taken by the aristocracy in Chinese porcelain."  A pair of apothecary jars from this set was sold at Christie's in London on May 9, 1994, lot 170.