A large Chinese famille rose lighthouse form coffee-pot decorated with a phoenix. Qianlong period

Decorated in the famille rose palette with various overglaze enamels with rocks and flowering plants in a garden near a balustrade, a pheasant on a rock and a peacock on a flowering branch. The shaped handle opposite the spout ends in a bird’s beak. The hight domed cover decorated in the same style.

Provenance

A French private collection

Related works

An identical coffee pot (Godtschalck bequest, 1915) is in the collection of the Royal Museums of Art and History (Brussels) and illustrated by C.J.A Jörg in “Chinese Export Porcelain. Chine de Commande from the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels“, 1989, pp. 84/85, no. 20.

Another (larger) famille rose model is known. A pair of these is illustrated by Michael Cohen & William Motley in Mandarin and Menagerie, Chinese and Japanese Export Ceramic Figures, Vol. I, The James E. Sowell Collection, 2008, p. 141, no. 16.15 (prov. Santos, London) and sold at Christie’s NYC, Chinese Export Art including the Sowell Collection, 21 january 2016, lot 167 (sold 12.500 USD).

Notice

The form of this tall coffeepot, sometimes referred to as lighthouse shape, copies English silver pots made between 1680 and 1740. The bird-shape spout is probably inspired by those found on Meissen porcelain teapots and coffeepots from the 1720’s and 1730’s, although the Chinese are known to have used those spouts as well. Lighthouse-shape coffeepots continued to be made in porcelain into the early 1800’s.

This model is also known in blue and white (one model illustrated bu Howard & Fuchs in Made in China: Export Porcelain from the Leo and Doris Hodroff Collection at Winterthur, pp. 115, no. 66), in the imari palette (see Christie’s NYC, The Collection of Benjamin F. Edwards III, 2010, lot 36) or with European decoration (see D.S.Howard, China for the West: Chinese Porcelain and Other Decorative Arts for Export Illustrated from the Mottahedeh Collection, 1978, T. I, p. 275.