A Meissen porcelain coffee pot with hydrangea relief
Decorated with a frieze of moulded hydrangea flowers and four further flowers to the matching associated lid. Painted by a "hausmaler" with courtly couples in gardens and further figures. Blue crossed swords mark. The lid with a firing crack.
The porcelain Meissen, around 1750/60, decor attributed to Franz Ferdinand Meyer Pressnitz/Prísecnice.
Franz Ferdinand Meyer or Mayer from the Bohemian town of Pressnitz, now Prísecnice in the Czech Republic was one of the most famous painters on white Meissen porcelain. Pieces can be attributed to him through the existence of a signed painted Meissen porcelain plaque dated "15th June 1752". It depicts the von Kayser couple and their five children, as well as an empty space for the expected sixth child "in Spe.", as portraits on a family tree. The plaque is now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (inv. no. C.117-1937). It forms the basis for all further attributions. The faces on the jug presented here show the same expressions, are similarly shaded and the cheeks are also accentuated in red. The gold calligraphy on the spout also speaks for a work by Meyer.
Provenance
Private collection, Westphalia, acquired in 1984 from Hans H. Mischell, Cologne.
Literature
For more on Meyer see Pazaurek, Deutsche Fayence- und Porzellan-Hausmaler, vol. 2, Leipzig 1925/Reprint Stuttgart 1971, p. 318 ff.