Delftware Highlights at the Winter Antique Show : Blue and White Bottle Coolers with its Flasks and Covers, Delft, circa 1695

From the 20th to 29th of January, will be held the 63rd edition of the Winter Antiques Show in New York. The Winter Antiques Show is the leading art, antiques, and design fair in America , featuring over 70 of the world’s top experts in the fine and decorative arts.

Before the fair begins, we would like to present every day one of the highlights that will be displayed on Aronson Antiquairs’ s booth.  Today, we would like to present this magnificient blue and white bottle coolers with its flasks and covers from circa 1695.

All but the covers marked LVE and either 3 2 on the cooler or 2 0 on the flasks in blue for Lambertus van Eenhoorn, the owner of De Metaale Pot (The Metal Pot) Factory from 1691 until 1721, or his widow Margarethe Teckmann until 1724

The cooler painted on the front with a fountain formed as cupid holding a cornucopia spouting water and striding on an urn above a circular pool, on either side groups of three figures conversing or strolling beneath trees before rustic buildings on hills, and on the reverse with a fountain formed as a putto with water spouting from his raised right hand and standing above a spouting dolphin between two seated and bearded figures of a river god supporting an overturned urn pouring water, and Neptune holding a trident, on either side pairs of figures conversing beneath trees before distant buildings on hills, the scenes between areas of baroque floral scrollwork on either side interrupted at the top with a bearded satyr’s-head handle further interrupting the blue-ground flowering-vine border around the convex-molded rim, the slightly flaring footrim with a lappet border, and the interior bisected by a vertical dividing wall; each teardrop-shaped flask with a slightly convex front painted with a fountain scene similar to that on the front of the cooler, the flattened back with a fountain formed by a spouting putto standing on a tall rock above two putti frolicking with Cupid between tall trees, the sides and neck with similar baroque scrollwork, and the flaring oval foot with a lappet border repeated around the sides of the circular covers above a dashed band around the rim, their tops each painted with a winged head of Cupid amidst clouds, and the interior threaded to screw onto the flask rims.

Dimensions: 

Cooler height: 19.2 cm. (7 9/16 in.); width: 30.7 cm. (12 1/16 in.);
Flask height: 30.8 cm. (121⁄8 in.)

Provenance: 

The Jules Desurmont Collection (date unknown), with the collector’s labels numbered 121 / 1924

Notes : 

This bottle cooler with its flasks of early pilgrim bottle form probably derives from a silver original fashioned during the period of Louis XIV (1638-1715) when all manner silver furnishings for both display and functional use were the most incontrovertible evidence of wealth and power. The form may well have originated as part of a suite of silver vessels as equipage for the dining room, which would have translated well into French faience or Dutch Delftware when, after the first French conscription of silver in 1689 to finance the country’s war-depleted treasury, elegant substitutes had to be found as replacements for the melted silver. The Delftware resulting from this silver conscription may owe much of its production to the Huguenot engraver and architectural designer, Daniel Marot (1661-1752), who left France in 1685, the year of both the Edict of Fontainebleau and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and settled in Holland, where he was so influential on the late baroque styles and fashions associated with William III and Queen Mary II.