A Rare Early Meissen Iron-Red and Gilt Porcelain Figure of a Seated Pagod, Circa 1715

Baron Max von Goldschmidt-Rothschild (1843-1940), Rothschild Palais, Bockenheimer Landstraße 10, Frankfurt am Main;

Forcibly sold to the City Council of Frankfurt in 1938;

Restituted to the heirs of Max von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, 1949;

Acquired from the estate of Max von Goldschmidt-Rothschild by Rosenberg & Stiebel, New York;

Acquired by Sydney J. Lamon (1897-1973), New York for $2,000 (together with another Meissen Pagod, and Meissen box) on November 2, 1949;

Sydney J. Lamon, New York;

his Estate sale, Christie's London, November 29, 1973, lot 16;

Christie's London, July 8, 2002, lot 260;

Brian Haughton, London

The decoration seen on the present pagod is highly unusual. A second gilt pagod, with a robe lined in blue enamel was also in the Sydney J. Lamon Collection, sold in his Estate sale at Christie's, November 29, 1973, lot 17; and another, skin-toned pagod, with a robe decorated with stars (lot 15).

First produced in Böttger stoneware from approximately 1711 and in porcelain by about 1713, pagoda figures are recorded in the first inventory of Augustus the Strong's porcelain collection. In the 1721 Inventarium über das Palais zu Alt-Dresden, which lists the contents of the Holländische Palais, later to become the Japanese Palace, 6 examples are recorded under numbers 87 and 88 respectively, published in Böttgersteinzeug Böttgerporzellan, 1969, p. 46. Several dozen pagodas are listed in the warehouse inventories of Dresden and Leipzig in 1719, see Pietsch and Banz, 2010, pp. 170-71, cat. no. 13, where two similar figures modelled with teawares, from the Porzellansammlung, Dresden are illustrated.