Qianlong period circa 1736-45
Dutch Market
Height: 25¾ inches; 65.5cm

Priced in GB pounds sterling 
£25,000
This item is located in the UK. Shipping from there is at the buyer's expense.

A large baluster vase and cover, decorated in underglaze blue and white with flowers and cell diapers, with an armorial cartouche in sepia, iron red, green enamel and gilding, the cover with a finial modelled as a squirrel holding a green leaf.

Provenance:  Wolf Family Collection No. 0905; Sotheby's Monaco, June 22, 1987, lot 1453; Mottahedeh Collection (No 850).

This vase was part of an extensive group of porcelains made for Jan Albert Sichterman (1692-1764) in the late 1730s.
Sichterman was born in Groningen, son of the soldier Galenus Sichterman and Margaretha Celosse. He initialy joined his father in the military but he fought a duel in 1715, killing his opponent.  After this he joined the VOC, arriving in Batavia in 1716 before moving to Bengal eventually becoming Director of Bengal in 1734. He successfully used his position to become extremely wealthy and his Chinese armorial porcelain is particularly fine and elaborate with a wide range of unusual shapes like this vase with its finely modelled squirrel.
He returned to the Netherlands in 1745, bringing back his armorial porcelain with him. In Groningen he built a large house,  the Sichtermanhuis at Ossenmarkt, which still stands today.
In Bengal in 1738 Sichterman was presented with a month old rhinoceros calf that had been orphaned by hunters. He adopted the rhino until she was grown, allowing her to wander freely around his residence. In 1741 she was acquired by a VOC ship’s captain and arrived in Rotterdam. Named Clara, she became a huge celebrity touring Europe, painted by Longhi and Oudry among others and eventually dying in 1758 in Lambeth in London.  Her biography appeared in 2005 by Glynis Ridley, Clara’s Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe.


References:  Kroes, Jochem (2007), Chinese Armorial Porcelain for the Dutch Market, the Sichterman armorial services described: pp. 127-130 and pp. 200-202, where a teapot with similar underglaze-blue decoration to this vase is illustrated, p. 201, cat. no. 115 (Kroes calls this decoration ‘Sichterman 2B); Jörg, Christiaan J.A. (1985), Jan Albert Sichterman. A Groninger Nabob and Art-collector. Itinerario. 9 (2): 178–195;  Jörg (1982), p. 357; Howard and Ayers (1978), Vol. II, p. 401, no. 399,  this vase illustrated;  Beurdeley, Michael (1962), p. 194, cat. 191, a bowl in the Muséee Guimet, Paris, with the arms wrongly attributed to the French family of Foucquet (fouquet = squirrel) whose arms have a standing squirrel;  Lunsingh Sheurleer (1966) plates 101-102, two vases with  iron red decoration;
https://www.groningermuseum.nl/en/art/exhibitions/king-of-groningen (exhibition 2014-2015; about Jan Albert Sichterman, including a five piece garniture of vases with these arms and squirrel knops but with iron red decoration.)