444 - Biedermeier View Cup with Landscape Painting and Rich Gilding, 1837-1844

Biedermeier View Cup with Landscape Painting and Rich Gilding, 1837-1844 Porcelain, white glazed, painted polychrome and richly gilt. Cylindrical cup with an ear-shaped handle curving high above the rim, this gilt throughout and with a moulded leaf motif at its junction. The wall shows a finely painted topographical view in shades of green, brown and ochre: an elongated, multi-storey light-coloured complex of buildings in a wooded valley, in front of it terraced gardens with Lombardy poplars and fruit trees, in the foreground on the path a Biedermeier couple with top hat and parasol. The upper rim gilt inside and out, beneath the view a gold band. The saucer with a broad gold rim and a second encircling gold ring. In the base of the saucer the underglaze blue sceptre mark above the letters KPM, together with a small impressed mark; the base of the cup unmarked, bearing only a painted black painter's mark. Good condition commensurate with age, the gilding rubbed. Cup H. 9 cm. 360-degree photo on our website. The Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Berlin used this form of mark from 1837 to 1844; before that the sceptre stood alone with a horizontal crossbar, and from 1844 the eagle was added. In the Biedermeier period view cups were not everyday ware but keepsakes and tokens of friendship, given on special occasions and afterwards displayed in the glass cabinet; many bear a painted dedication or the name of the view depicted on the base. Veduta painting on porcelain required its own class of painters within the manufactory, who worked from engraved models.