CLICK HERE TO BUY THIS PAIR GERMAN DRESDEN BIRD HANDLE URNS VASE MEISSEN ON CANONBURY ANTIQUES

Pair German Dresden Bird Handle Urns Vase Meissen

You are viewing a fantastic pair of Meissen style urns with gorgeous provincial scenes hand painted onto the panels. Hopefully the photographs illustrate the amount of work that would have gone into the making of these urns as the brushstrokes are incredibly detailed. The urns also feature very unusual bird neck handles.

The hand painted features include the two panels either side of the classically shaped urn and two on the base. There are also various floral sprays on the urns, and intricate gold leaf designs on the rim and around the panel. Simply breathtaking.

They are both offered in perfect condition and ready for home use right away, and we are expecting a lot of interest so get your bids in early. Meissen (porcelain), hard-paste porcelain made at a factory established in 1710 at Meissen, near Dresden, in Saxony, east-central Germany. (The ware was once known as “Dresden” in England, and is still called “Saxe” in France.) From the time that Oriental porcelain first reached Europe, potters in France and Germany—to whom the ingredients of true, or hard-paste, porcelain remained unknown—could only imitate it, using artificial, or soft-paste, porcelain. In 1708, as a result of his research into china clays (seekaolin), an alchemist, J. F. Böttger, produced a white porcelain like that of the Chinese. As a result, Böttger’s patron, Frederick Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, established the Meissen factory in 1710.

During its early period, in the years 1710 to 1719, the factory produced porcelain wares that replicated the shapes of Chinese pieces or imitated those of contemporary silver vessels. At this stage, the porcelain body was a light greyish-yellow rather than pure white, and the decoration, often floral or in the form of chinoiserie, was executed in colours of rather coarse hues. From 1710 to 1730 the factory also produced a red stoneware known as Böttger stoneware.

In the 1720s the Meissen factory’s distinctive white paste was perfected and decoration of the wares became brighter and more refined. The years 1720 to 1735 were dominated by the work of the painters J. G. Höroldt and A. F. von Löwenfinck. Chinoiserie decoration became particularly dominant and the influence of Japanese porcelain affected both the shape and the decoration of Meissen pieces. In the early 1730s, European-style flower paintings, landscapes, and topographical subjects were also used.

The great period of figure production at Meissen began in 1727, when the modeller J. G. Kirchner joined the factory. An enormous range of figures, delicately modelled and meticulously decorated, was produced, most notably small-scale figures of people and animals that were made in sets as table decorations. Johann Joachim Kändler, who joined in 1731, took figure production at Meissen to its greatest heights. Typical of Kändler’s work are small animals modelled from life and sets of figures symbolizing such themes as the Four Seasons or the Five Senses; characters from the commedia dell’arte; and sets depicting “Cris de Paris”, representing Parisian street scenes.

After the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) the quality of Dresden porcelain declined as Sèvres, near Paris, became the leading porcelain factory in Europe. In the later 18th century, however, a range of wares in the fashionable Neo-Classical style was produced. Since that time, although it has continued to produce high-quality table porcelain, the Meissen factory has never regained the supremacy that it enjoyed in the first 50 years of its existence.

CLICK HERE TO BUY THIS PAIR GERMAN DRESDEN BIRD HANDLE URNS VASE MEISSEN ON CANONBURY ANTIQUES