A Meissen basket centrepiece from the Podewils service, circa 1741-42

Footnotes

Provenance:
Ole Olsen Collection, Copenhagen (by 1927)

Literature:
H. Schmitz, Generaldirektør Ole Olsens Kunstsamlinger II (1927), p. 38, no. 1563, pl. LV;
T. Iwe, Das churcöllnische Speiseservice für Kurfürst Clemens August von Köln, in Keramos 195 (2007), p. 12, ill. 5

Heinrich von Podewils (1695-1760) entered Prussian service in 1720 and, together with his two brothers, was raised to the rank of Graf (Count) in 1741. He was Prussian envoy in Copenhagen and Stockholm in 1728-29, and subsequently was Prussian negotiator following the Silesian wars, signing the peace treaties of Breslau (1742) and Dresden (1745). It was probably in connection with the First Silesian War that Podewils was sent by the newly-crowned King of Prussia, Frederick the Great, on a mission to Dresden, where he arrived on 15 November 1741. Podewils himself recorded in a memoir, "as of the end of 1741, I was posted by His Royal Majesty to the court of Dresden where, after having successfully accomplished my commission, the King in Poland most graciously made me a gift of a portrait of himself, lavishly set with diamonds, and a costly porcelain table service" (quoted in Samuel Wittwer, Liasons Fragiles: Exchanges of Gifts between Saxony and Prussia in the Early Eighteenth Century. In Cassidy-Geiger (ed.) 2007, p. 101)).

The shapes for the service had been developed around the same time for the Elector Clemens August of Cologne (Hoffmeister 1999, II, no. 361), and a handful of slightly later examples with simple flower painting have also survived. Dr. Wittwer speculates (op. cit., p. 102) that the Podewils service decoration of indianische Blumen may originally have been intended for the Elector, who preferred more European flowers. The design may then have been adapted for Podewils, perhaps because the service was urgently required. Additions to the service appear to have been ordered at Meissen, and at the Berlin manufactory after Podewils' death. In a letter to Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein, Frederick the Great wrote of Podewils after his death: "I regret very much poor Podewils. He was a man of honour and a good citizen. The loss of such a worthy and faithful servant will always remain a sorrowful memory" (quoted in Hoffmeister 1999, II, p. 608). One hundred and sixty-three pieces from this service (including some Berlin replacements) including the present lot were in the collection of Ole Olsen, which was sold in Copenhagen between 1943 and 1953.