Estate / Collection: Property from a Private Collection

Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, St. Petersburg, period of Alexander II, circa 1881

Designed by August Spiess, each of baluster form, the body of one with a frieze depicting putti in a bacchanalian scene, centering Bacchus atop a barrel of wine, flanked by putti playing with leopards and barrels of wine; the other with putti in a maritime scene, centering Neptune on a shell flanked by putti, dolphins and swans; each waisted neck painted with trees suspending a bird's nest above intertwined branches and birds; the sides with two gilt Bacchic masks issuing angular gilt-bronze handles suspending laurel wreaths; on a waisted socle, circular foot and a square gilt-bronze base with cut corners; the edge of the lower body incised with modeler's Cyrillic initials SU. Height 24 inches (61 cm).

(2)

Provenance:

Acquired by the Persian Consul General to Russia prior to 1917.
By descent to the present owner.

August Spiess (1817-1904) was born in Germany and trained at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Invited to Russia in 1846, he joined the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory in 1849 and was appointed model-maker in 1853. Over the course of his forty-seven-year career, Spiess served as the chief of sculpture and author of the majority of the models created at the manufactory. Spiess retired in 1897, having received many awards and accolades for his designs.

Spiess was a prominent exponent of historicism and much of his work incorporates Rococo design elements. However, he had a talent for adapting to trends and changing fashions. As Russian porcelain scholar Dr. Ekaterina Khmelnitskaya observes in August Spiess and the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory: A Life Dedicated to Porcelain (Moscow, 2012), Spiess was able to incorporate eclectic elements into his designs and to balance several parallel stylistic tendencies. The same decorative elements which, Khmelnitskaya continues, “boldly roam” from one work to another are an important feature of his creative method.

The present vases are comparable to others Spiess authored circa 1870 to 1890, all of which illustrate his use of “roaming” decorative elements and eclectic design. A vase of the same form and decorated with a frieze depicting putti (held in a private collection, Hamburg, Germany), is illustrated in E.S. Khmelnitskaya, August Spiess and the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory: A Life Dedicated to Porcelain (Moscow, 2012), pp. 48-49, no. 301. Other vases of the same form, each with a frieze molded with putti and with mask handles, are illustrated, ibid, pp. 50-51, nos. 33 and 34. The latter example is held in the collection of the State Peterhof Palace Museum, Russia (inv. no. PDMP 4806-f). A further example of the same form of vase with a grisaille painted frieze of putti, also in the State Peterhof Palace Museum (inv. no. PDMP 4850-f), is illustrated, ibid, pp. 52-53, no. 35. One of a pair of vases by Spiess held in a private collection, while of different form, is painted with a nearly identical frieze of Neptune on a shell, flanked by putti, dolphins and swans (ibid, p. 59, no. 46).