488 - KPM Berlin Porcelain Figure Miner in Parade Dress after Johannes Eckstein, 20th C.

KPM Berlin Porcelain Figure Miner in Parade Dress after Johannes Eckstein, 20th C. Porcelain, white glazed, painted polychrome and gilt. Standing figure of a young miner in parade dress, on a square plinth with an ochre-painted rocky ground. He wears a grass-green coat with long tails and gold epaulettes, beneath it a red waistcoat with a row of gold buttons and a gold bow, with a white neckerchief, black breeches, white stockings and black buckled shoes. On his head a tall green miner's cap with an interlaced gold monogram GR. In his left hand a white, gilt mine lamp, in his right a silver-coloured axe blade. Under the plinth the underglaze blue sceptre mark, in iron red the orb with KPM as well as the black painter's number 14 R. age-appropriate condition, small loss of colour on the arm, the axe handle is missing. H. 17 cm. The design of the miner figures of the Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Berlin goes back to the sculptor Johannes Eckstein, who created them around 1775/85; the manufactory modelled them again and again over more than two hundred years. They appear as a pair, a Prussian and a Hanoverian miner. What is worn is not working clothing but the parade dress in which miners appeared at mining processions and court festivities; lamp and axe belong to it as emblems of their estate. The monogram on the cap distinguishes the two: FR for Fridericus Rex the Prussian, GR for Georgius Rex the Hanoverian miner. The iron red orb was introduced in 1832 as a painters' mark; the colour red identified flower painting as well as figures and landscapes painted in colour, while green stood for decorative painting and blue for underglaze painting.