445 - Carl Tielsch Altwasser Presentation Plate with Genre Scenes and Gilding, circa 1850

Carl Tielsch Altwasser Presentation Plate with Genre Scenes and Gilding, circa 1850 Porcelain, polychrome painting, richly gilt, glazed. Imposing presentation plate by the Silesian porcelain manufactory Carl Tielsch in Altwasser, circa 1850. The white well is framed by a broad, ornamentally designed gilt rim, into which three finely painted, fresh-coloured genre scenes are set in oval reserves. The first scene shows the view over a mining and industrial town lying in the valley with numerous smoking chimneys; in the foreground a wandering journeyman with his bundle on a stick converses with two resting men, behind them a horse-drawn cart on a dusty road. The second scene leads into a rural parlour: a woman in traditional costume, a standing man with a hat and a boy seated at the table are surrounded by rustic household goods, a wall shelf, a jug and a small dog, with daylight falling through the window. The third scene shows a group of wanderers in a wide landscape - a woman with a back basket (Kiepe), several men in long coats and hats, one smoking a pipe, and a boy - before a manor with a tall chimney and a village in the valley. The finely painted depictions give a vivid insight into everyday life and the itinerant life of the mid-19th c. The underside with the blue manufactory mark. Age-appropriate condition, the decoration rubbed, D. 30 cm. The porcelain manufactory Carl Tielsch was founded in 1845 in Altwasser near Waldenburg in Silesia and developed within a few decades into one of the largest and most respected German porcelain producers, before being absorbed into the Hutschenreuther group in 1932. The finely painted genre scenes with their themes of craft, itinerancy and rural everyday life stand in the tradition of Biedermeier and genre painting and combine topographically evocative views of places with narrative figural staffage. In combination with the rich gilding, an imposing presentation piece was created, of the kind that adorned well-to-do bourgeois and aristocratic households of the mid-19th c. A decorative collector's piece for friends of Silesian porcelain and of the genre painting of Historicism.