Vase

Artist/Maker

DatesManufactured: Manufactured 1730 - 1731

Material / Technique

Dimensionsh x diam: Mått 46,7 x 22 cm

Inventory numberNMK CXV 658

AcqusitionBequest 1872 Karl XV

Other titlesTitle (sv): Vas med hög kinesisk form Title (en): Vase Label (sv): Vas

DescriptionDescription: With china successfully being produced in Meissen, designs were also brought in from China. Here, however, the decoration is Japanese. The kakiemon style consists of trees and branches with imaginative flowers. The Swedish coat of arms on the urn shows that the set was a gift from Friedrich August II of Saxony to the Swedish royals in 1734. His aim was to get Swedish support for his candidacy as king of Poland during the ongoing conflict. Exhibition text: The set of urns and vases was gifted to Ulrika Eleonora and Fredrik I of Sweden in 1734. The gift came from Augustus III of Poland and Saxony, who, the previous year, had succeeded his father, Augustus II, the founder of the porcelain manufactory in Meissen. This was a very exclusive gift that was presented to the Swedish king and queen with the aim of deepening an alliance between Sweden and the kingdom on the continent. The central urn is embellished on one side with Ulrika Eleonora’s coat of arms on top of the Greater Coat of Arms of Sweden, and on the other side with King Fredrik I’s coat of arms. This is because of the queen’s status as a former monarch. All of the objects are richly decorated in Kakiemon style after the colourful decoration that came from Arita in Japan. According to tradition, Sakaida Kizaemon (1596–1666) developed the motifs and colours; the orange-red hue is called kaki in Japanese. The garniture was positioned as it had been traditionally since the 17th century, with the large urn in the centre, flanked by the two tall vases, the two urns and the two smaller vases in the outermost positions of the line. The garniture can partly be followed in the inventory for Drottningholm Palace, where Queen Lovisa Ulrika was the heiress of Ulrika Eleonora, who was childless. When Lovisa Ulrika died in 1782, the urns were probably inherited by her daughter, the sister of Gustaf III, Princess Sofia Albertina. She also died childless, and her lady-in-waiting Lolotte Forssberg was a beneficiary of her will. King Karl XV managed to collect six of the objects, but the large urn was not included in the rest of the garniture until 1940. In the archives, information from 1734 indicates that the two smaller lidded urns had to be replaced by brand new ones as they had broken in transit; they then gained a different signature. In the 20th century, it was therefore thought that they were not part of the set, and they were kept separately. It is only now that all the objects in the important gift from Augustus in Dresden have been identified. See inventory: NMK 125/1940, NMK CXV 658, NMK CXV 659, NMK CXV 660, NMK CXV 661, NMK CXV 1322 and NMK CXV 1323.

Exhibited

Collection

MaterialPorcelain