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Porcelain Figures from a Series “Viennese Market Criers” Thread Vendor, around 1765 Design: Johann Joseph Niedermayer (?) Execution: Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur, Anton Payer, Christoph Dreischarf Porcelain, painted, h 20.9 cm Marked: sub-glaze blue porcelain mark, etching symbol: X, decorator no. 26 (= Ch. Dreischarf), stamped embosser’s sign P (= A. Payer) Inv. No. 49.139 Acquired at the auction of Karl Mayer’s porcelain collection at Glückselig, 1928 From 1745 to 1785 the Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur produced several series of figures depicting itinerant merchants and traders. Today around 65 such statuettes are known, including a female fishmonger, a seller of rapier handles, a tobacco trader, a barometer seller, a vendor of crotchetwork, a piper with a puppet, a ribbon seller, a cook, a gardener, a blacksmith, a milliner or a wig maker. They are among the oldest depictions of their kind. Many of these trades have long since died out. Similarly, itinerant merchants such as the two shown here – the thread vendor who sold the most varied sewing commodities, such as thread and ribbons, or the fancy goods dealer, who offered jewellery, haberdashery and other utensils with the finest finish – no longer exist. The porcelain figures preceded the similarly popular “market crier characters” produced by Viennese copperplate engravers. The manufacturers Meissen and Sèvres led the way in small statuettes, influenced by French market crier engravings. The Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur, founded in 1718 and taken over by the state in 1744, picked up this new subject and soon found its own style after an initial period of imitating French models. The statuettes of the highest artistic worth were created after 1755 in the heyday of Viennese Rococo. The Viennese figures are elegant in their
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Fancy Goods Dealer, around 1755 Design: Johann Joseph Niedermayer (?) Execution: Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur, Anton Payer Porcelain, painted, h 20.4 cm Marked: sub-glaze blue porcelain mark, stamped embosser’s sign P (= A. Payer) Inv. No. 49.148 Acquired at the auction of Karl Mayer’s porcelain collection at Glückselig, 1928
movement, their posture is natural and elated. The painting is delicate, and the pieces are marked by careful and deliberately detailed execution. The materials for the clothing are mostly in one colour; fur trimmings, patterned in the style of ermine, or striped neckerchiefs were highly popular. The gold-decorated bodices are of particular finesse. Towards the end of the Rococo Era, the small scattered flower patterning that was popular at the time was used to decorate women’s dresses. The figures’ pedestal is mostly furnished with gold decoration. The creator of these models was most likely Johann Joseph Niedermayer, model master of the Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur from 1747 to 1784. The embosser’s task was to give final shape to the figures and work out details, whereby more or less significant variants of the same figures were created without altering the models. The task of painting the figures fell to the so-called decorators. AH
Lit.: Hubert Kaut: Kaufrufe aus Wien. Volkstypen und Straßenszenen in der Wiener Graphik von 1775 bis 1914, Vienna/ Munich 1970, pp. 26-29. Josef Folnesics: Die Wiener-Porzellan Sammlung Karl Mayer. Katalog und historische Einleitung, Vienna 1914, pp. 60ff. Edmund Wilhelm Braun: Ausruferfiguren aus Alt-Wiener Porzellan, in: Alois Trost (Ed.): Alt-Wiener Kalender für das Jahr 1918, Vienna 1918, pp. 105-109.