446 - Porcelain Lidded Box with Plate in Imari Decor, Marked Leduc et Cie Paris

Porcelain Lidded Box with Plate in Imari Decor, Marked Leduc et Cie Paris Porcelain, white glazed, painted polychrome and in gold. Cylindrical lidded box with a matching flat plate. The decor in iron red, blue, turquoise and gold: on the wall flower baskets and stylised vases between delicate scattered blossoms, above and below broad borders of palmettes, scrollwork and lattice fields, the plate with an encircling border in the same manner, the well white. The lid with a mounted brass knob in the form of a flower bud. The plate marked in iron red in the base Leduc et Cie, 30 B. Malesherbes, Paris. Good condition. Box H. 10 cm, diam. 8.5 cm; plate H. 3 cm, diam. 17.5 cm. 360-degree photo on our website. The Boulevard Malesherbes was created under Baron Haussmann and opened by Napoleon III on 13 August 1861; it immediately became a fashionable Paris address. A mark bearing this address can therefore not have originated before 1861. Parisian porcelain of the 19th century has no uniform manufactory mark: the pieces usually bear the mark of the decorating workshop or of the house which obtained the whiteware and had it decorated, and many remain entirely unmarked. The type of decor is named after the Japanese port of Imari, through which porcelain from Arita was shipped to Europe from the 17th century; its palette was imitated in Meissen, Delft and Chantilly and came into fashion again in France and England in the 19th century. Lidded boxes of this kind served on the dressing table to hold powder or pomade, the plate receiving the lid.