Vase
workshop of Adrianus Kocx (fl.1686 - 1701)
Date
1690 - 1695
Materials
Ceramic
Measurements
955 x 410 x 315 mm
Place of origin
Delft
Order this imageCollection
Uppark House and Garden, West Sussex
NT 137410
Summary
Flower vase, tin-glazed earthenware (Delftware), painted with cobalt blue decoration, made by the ‘Greek A’ factory owned by Adriaenus Koeks, Delft, Netherlands, about 1690-95. In four sections, with blue twisted snake handles, the baluster body painted in colours with Amorini and flowers, the borders painted with flowering foliage, the upper part with numerous tulip apertures, the fluted stem painted with a putti in each flute, the base with flowering foliage.
Full description
Flower vase, tin-glazed earthenware (Delftware), painted with cobalt blue decoration, made by the ‘Greek A’ factory owned by Adriaenus Koeks, Delft, Netherlands, about 1690-95. This flower vase is marked with the conjoined AK cipher of Adriaenus Koeks (or Adriaen Kocks), owner of the ‘Greek A’ factory (De Grieksche A), Delft, Netherlands, for about 1690-95. Koeks's Imported Dutch flower vases were very much an aristocratic luxury, for example commissioned by William and Mary for the Water Gallery at Hampton Court, c. 1689-94 (flower vases and pyramids are still in the Royal Collection). Other members of their court circle commissioned similar vases, such as Hans William Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland (1649-1709) and John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722). Again, a pair of flower vases of the same shape, painted in cobalt oxide, but with a more typical decoration of stylized flowers, birds and peacocks was excavated from Mary’s garden adjacent to her cellar dairy at Het Loo Palace.[1] The Het Loo pair, also marked for Samuel van Eenhoorn, c. 1678-86, is similar to an example at Chatsworth, acquired by the 4th Earl and 1st Duke of Devonshire (1641-1707), c.1689-1694; and another pair is at the Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft, ex-collection of the London decorator Nancy Lancaster. an almost identical example with the same decoration, but missing the stand, was acquired by William Blaythwait (1649-1717) for Dyrham Park, c. 1703-10.This list is not exhaustive; there is a similar vase, missing the original cover and stands, painted with Neptune and seafigures, at Blickling, displayed in the North West Staircase. Sometimes incorrectly called ‘tulip vases’ after the Tulipomania of the 1630s, they were designed to display a variety of cut-flowers, not just tulips, in water filled-tiers. In fact, it was double-headed hyacinths, which were the fashionable flower of the 1690s; the heavy headed flowers were well-supported by the long spouts. Evidence of how they were dressed with cut-flowers is found on images of these pyramids executed in needlepoint chair covers, c.1725, at Croft Castle (NT), noted above, and Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire, confirming that they held flowers that were in season, and not just tulips. Dyrham Park’s 1710 inventory records the location of a flower vase in the Vestibule ‘a large Pyramid Delf Flower pot in ye chimney’ and the other in ‘The Best Bed Chamber Above Stairs’.[2] The shape is based on an earthenware flower container with snake handles illustrated in Giovanni Battista Ferrari (1582-1655), Flora seu de Florum cultura lib IV, Amsterdam, 1664.[3] The painted decoration on the Uppark model is amongst the finest work produced during this period with subtle tones of blue used to suggest distance. The design of naked boys is directly copied from engravings of boys fencing (L’Escrime) and boys playing on a seesaw (La Balançoire), after Jacques Stella (1596-1657), a French painter and engraver. The series was engraved by his niece, Claudine Bouzonnet Stella (1636-97), in Les jeux et plaisirs de l'enfance, Paris, 1657.[4] Did the Library of William and Mary include a copy of Stella’s Les jeux et plaisirs de l'enfance? The combination of naturalistic flower painting with the children is also unusual on Delft. Daniel Marot (1661-1752) is the Huguenot designer frequently associated with the deign of many of the Dutch Delft flower vases made for the court of William and Mary at Het Loo and Hampton Court. A 1710 advertisement in the Hague Friday Courant read ‘Louis de Pré of Amsterdam has several fine quality vases and pots at the Municipal Sculpture warehouse, which were made by Mr. Daniell Marot. They have the resonance of a bell and have just come from England’.[5] These may have been pieces made for Mary, but following her death in 1694 and later William’s in 1702 they were no longer desired. In the 1690s, Daniel Marot was working for private houses in addition to the royal household, in particular he was employed by the Francophile, Ralph, 1st Duke of Montagu (1638-1709), at Montagu House in London. Here Marot worked with the French court flower painter Jean Baptiste Monnoyer (1636-99), whose flowers have an architectural character and a loose handling well suited to baroque interiors.[6] Monnoyer had experience in producing designs for execution in other mediums, such as engravings and tapestries. When first in Paris, he designed flowers and fruits to ornament the borders of tapestries woven at the Gobelins and Beauvais manufactories. Before leaving for England in the 1680s, he published a portfolio of engravings entitled Le Livre de toutes sortes de fleurs d'après nature (Book of All Kinds of Flowers from Nature), with botanically accurate images arranged in beautiful displays, widely copied by various craftsmen.[7] Interestingly, there was a series of tapestries of naked boys, or bacchanals, although not after Stella, at Montagu House.[8] Unfortunately, while there is no evidence to prove that Marot collaborated with Monnoyer to produce the designs for this vase, it is unarguably, among the finest painted Delft flower vases, c. 1690-95, to survive. Interestingly, although the focus in John Webb’s list of 1856 was on Sèvres porcelain, he makes no mention of the Delft, which doubtless would have been an important heirloom. [1] A.M.L. Erkelens.”Delffs porcelijn” van Koningin Mary II : ceramiek op Het Loo uit de tijd van Willem III en Mary II /Queen Mary's “Delft porcelain” : ceramics at Het Loo from the time of William and Mary, Apeldoorn, 1996, p. 63. [2] Karin. M. Walton. ‘An Inventory of 1710 from Dyrham Park’, Furniture History Society, London, 1986. pp. 58-59. [3] Ibid., p. 45. [4] A wine jug decorated with a scene of children blowing soap bubbles, Les Bouteilles de Savon, after Stella, from the Het Jonge Moriaenshooft, Jacob Wemmerson Hoppesteyn factory, Delft, c. 1670, is illustrated in C.H. de Jonge, Delft Ceramics, London, 1969, ill. 35, p. 44, but the print source is not identified. [5] Michael Archer. ‘Dutch Delft at the Court of William and Mary’, The International Ceramic Fair and Seminar Handbook, London, 1984, pp. 15-20, p. 20. [6] Gervase Jackson-Stops (ed.). The Treasure Houses of Britain. 500 years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting, Washington and New Haven, 1985, p. 194, Cat. No. 126. [7] An interesting botanical print source intended for goldsmiths and other designers was published by Nicolas Cochin (1610-1686) or Noël Cochin (1622-c. 1685) Livre nouveau de fleurs tres util pour l’art d’orfevrerie, et autres, Paris, 1645, but is more formal than the flowers depicted on these vases. [8] Cotehele has a tapestry with Bacchanals after Stella. Comparable examples: Flower vase of the same form, but missing the stand, painted by the same artist and the same subject matter is at Dyrham Park, the complete form survives at Chatsworth, the Prinsenhof, Delft, and the Glaisher Collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, a single example painted is a similar maner after Marot designs is in the Gemeentemuseum De Haag, (inv.nr.OC(D) 3-1965)
Makers and roles
workshop of Adrianus Kocx (fl.1686 - 1701), manufactory director
References
Erkelens, 1996: A.M.L.E. Erkelens, 'Delffs Porcelijn' van koningin Mary II: Ceramiek op Het Loo uit de tijd van Willem III en Mary II, Palais Het Loo, Apeldoorn/Waanders Uitgevers, Zwolle, cat. 4, pp. 64-6