•D2519. Two Rectangular Blue and White Bottles

Delft, circa 1685

Each marked SVE 19 in blue for Samuel van Eenhoorn, the owner of De Grieksche A (The Greek A) factory from 1678 to 1686

Each painted on all four sides with chinoiserie figures and attendants amidst shrubbery in a hilly landscape within blue lines at the edges, the sides with the scenes beneath the elaborate monogram surmounted by a jeweled coronet interrupting a bowknotted roundel of love-knots, and the flat shoulder with floral panels reserved on a blue ground around the short rectangular neck.

DIMENSIONS
Heights: 27 cm. (10.6 in.);
Lengths: 13.7 cm. (5.4 in.);
Widths: 9.7 cm. (3.8 in.)

PROVENANCE
The Kitty Valkier-Schreurs Collection, Belgium;
Aronson Antiquairs, Amsterdam

LITERATURE
Described and illustrated in Aronson 2009, pp. 6-7, no. 2 and Fourest 1980, p. 38, no. 17

NOTE
This form is often referred to as a tea canister; however, Van Aken-Fehmers 1999, p. 95, discusses the shape, suggesting that it resembles European glass liquor bottles. The model appears in Chinese export porcelain at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and VOC archives record the contents of such bottles as ‘gedestileerde wateren’ (distilled waters). Van Aken-Fehmers further notes their designation as ‘confituir vlessen,’ kept in a fitted case and filled with candy or syrups, which were used with tea, and they could also hold dry tea leaves. The 1691 inventory De Metaale Pot (The Metal Pot) factory mentions small and large tea bottles (theeflessen), but it is unclear if they would refer to narrow-necked bottles of this type.

A comparable bottle with the same cipher is housed in the Musée National de Céramique, Sèvres (inv.no. MNC 12519) and is illustrated in Lahaussois (1998, p. 88, no. 33). Lahaussois notes that these ciphers are purely decorative and otherwise without meaning. However, given the high quality of these bottles, it seems unlikely that such intricately intertwined, mirror-image monograms would have been used unless they specifically represented the initials of an individual who commissioned them. A similar princely crown motif appears on an SVE-marked salt, which features another unidentified cipher flanked by laurel branches, in the collection of Palace Het Loo, Apeldoorn, illustrated in Erkelens (1996, p. 143, no. 36). A well-known example of early Delftware with an identified crowned double monogram is the service made for Wenzel Ferdinand, Prince Lobkowicz, produced by Lambertus Cleffius of De Metaale Pot factory around 1685.

Delft painters had access to various sources for reproducing these ciphers. One such design book was Daniel de La Feuille’s Livre nouveau et utile pour toutes sortes d’artistes, published in Amsterdam in 1694, which featured four alphabets of ornamental monograms. A Dutch edition, Het sinnebeeldig cyferboeck, was later published by Petrus Schenk in the early eighteenth century. Other relevant sources include A. Hogeboom’s Groote en kleene voorbeelden van alderhande door-een-gevlogte naam letteren (circa 1680), and A. de Winter’s Verscheyde Dooreen-gevlogte Naam-Letteren of Chifres, both of which were published in Amsterdam in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, providing further resources for painters, engravers, and craftsmen.

SIMILAR EXAMPLES
A similar bottle marked “SVE 18” was sold at Christie’s Amsterdam on June 27, 2000, lot 420, while another with very similar decoration, but attributed to Adrianus Kocx, is housed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and is illustrated in Van Dam 2004, p. 86, ill. 43. The collection of the Musée National de Céramique, Sèvres, holds a bottle featuring the exact same parasol figures and monogram, marked “SVE 29” (inv. no. MNC 12 519), as depicted in Fay-Hallé and Lahaussois (2003, p. 25). Another SVE-marked example, with sloping shoulders and decorated with flowering branches, rockwork, and birds, is in the collection of the Kunstmuseum, The Hague, and illustrated in Van Aken-Fehmers 1999, p. 95, no. 5. Additionally, a further example from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, is depicted in Neurdenburg 1948, ill. 43.

The production of these types of bottles continued under Adrianus Kocx, the succeeding owner of De Grieksche A (1686-1701). An especially notable example from this period, featuring the arms of the Austrian Zinzendorf family, is from the Dr. Günther Grethe Collection, Hamburg, and is illustrated in Aronson 2004, p. 69, no. 79. Another pair, marked “AK” and from the Collection Doodeheefver-Toonen, was sold at Christie’s in Amsterdam on July 1, 2004, lot 627.