Description:
Baskets like these are adaptations of European pottery or porcelain originals. Pierced work is a laborious process requiring the craftsman to cut the clay entirely by hand. Oddly enough pierced work appears to be an almost contemporaneous development in China and Europe. In Italy, Faentine potters began to make pierced dishes during the mannerist period of the late Renaissance towards the end of the 16th century. Their inspiration was Venetian glass. In China, the potters of Jingdezhen produced porcelains with unimaginably tiny pierced work aptly called linglong or "devil's work." A pair of bowls from the Wanli period in the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art attest to their skill at the end of the Ming dynasty. Pierced silver baskets with flared sides are known from the late 1730s in England, and it is from these that the present pieces ultimately derive, although this shallow form indicates that the immediate source was probably cream ware or porcelain of the early neo-classical period, i.e. circa 1770. Chinese export porcelain oval basket with pierced (or recticulated, openwork, or punchwork) flaring sides and two molded two-part scrolled handles attached to the exterior rim and side on the ends, decorated with a garden scene in the Famille rose palette of pink, purple, green, blue, iron-red, and gilding. The well has large floral sprays and a running fence; the interior sides have a red and gilt diaper-cell border with four floral spray reserves around the rim, over four solid panels with floral sprigs and plain latticework or basketweave sides. The exterior sides have the same rim and four floral sprigs panels, but the sides strips are decorated in red and gilt, all over a gilt spearhead band around the base.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+1925X |
