A very rare Vienna (Du Paquier) porcelain plat de ménage centrepiece, circa 1740

With Elfriede Langeloh, by repute;

Anton Redlich (1890-1938) Collection, Vienna and New York;

The Anton Redlich collection of rare Vienna porcelains, Kende Galleries, Inc., New York, 5-6 April 1940, lot 30 (sold for $170);

Maude Alice Keteltas Wetmore (1873-1951) or her sister Edith Malvina Keteltas Wetmore (1870-1966);

Chateau-sur-Mer, Property from the Estates of the late Edith M. K. Wetmore and Maude A. K. Wetmore, Newport, RI., Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., on the premises, 16-18 September 1969, lot 809 (sold for $4,250); 

Sarah Belk Gambrell (1918-2020) Collection, Charlotte, N.C, probably acquired at the above sale; 

her sale, Doyle, New York, 24 June 2021, lot 27.

Vienna, Belvedere, Prinz Eugen Ausstellung, May-October 1933;

Paris, Musée du Jeu de Paume, Exposition d'Art Autrichien, May-October 1937.

Führer durch die Prinz-Eugen-Ausstellung, exh. cat., Vienna, 1933;

Alfred Stix, Exposition d'art autrichien, exh. cat., Paris, 1937;

Meredith Chilton (ed.), Fired by Passion, Vienna Baroque Porcelain of Claudius Innocentius du Paquier, Vols. 1 and 3, Stuttgart, 2009, pp. 832-833, 1303, cat. no. 345, fig. 9.60.

The present plat de ménage stands as an exceptionally rare survival from the early phase of Viennese porcelain production, distinguished not only by its refined form but also by its apparent uniqueness among the recorded porcelain. A sugar caster of related form is preserved in the Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna (inv. nr.KE 9231), while a further trencher salt, together with a pair of oil and vinegar ewers of similar taste, was included in the 1904 Ausstellung von Alt-Wiener Porzellan [Exhibition of Old Viennese Porcelain], reproduced in a photograph in the MAK collection (inv. no. KI 7577-15). The decoration corresponds closely to that found on the Liechtenstein “Scattered Flowers” (g’sätten Bliemel) dinner and dessert service, acquired in 1746 by Johann Adam Andreas I von Liechtenstein or Joseph Wenzel I von Liechtenstein. 

Anton Redlich (1890-1938)

The trajectory of Anton Redlich—born in Vienna in 1890—reflects the intertwined worlds of industrial wealth, collecting culture, and forced migration in early 20th-century Europe. Heir to the Austria Brewery enterprises in Vienna, Mödling, and Atzgersdorf, through his mother, Bertha Redlich-Floderer, Redlich also assumed stewardship of a significant porcelain collection, emblematic of Central European bourgeois collecting traditions. As well as Viennese porcelain, he cultivated a discerning interest in early Islamic ceramics, as well as Islamic glass and textiles, aligning his collection with broader scholarly and market trends that increasingly valued non-European decorative arts. The upheavals of 1938 compelled Redlich to flee Vienna, first to Switzerland and ultimately to the United States. Notably, he succeeded in transporting a substantial portion of his collection into exile. In April 1940, a considerable segment of these works entered the American art market through an auction held at Kende Galleries in New York.

Chateau-sur-Mer, Newport

Twenty-nine years later, at the sale of the Wetmore estate, the New York Times reported:

“The massive granite castle, with its tower, marble hall and magnificent oak staircase, has stood on Bellevue Avenue for more than a century, a monument of the dignity of bygone eras.” The record auction netted $582,180, the amount exceeded by about 40 per cent the previous Newport auction record: $415,292 set in 1962 for the contents of the Elms, the Berwind estate. Among the highlights of the decorative arts, a large 131-piece Venice porcelain dinner service, circa 1765, sold to a private collector in New York for $9,250. (The service would sell again at Sotheby’s, London, Piano Nobile, A Collection from an Aristocratic Milanese Palazzo, 5 November 2013, lot 66 for £182,500). 

Chateau-Sur-Mer is one of the first grand “Cottage Villas” of the Gilded Age in Newport, Rhode Island. It was built in 1851-52 for William Shepard Wetmore (1801-1862), a merchant in the Old China Trade, and in 1872-73, alterations to the original building were carried out by Richard Morris Hunt in the French Second Empire style.