European porcelain figures at Fenton House

Apollo, April, 2003 by Anton Gabszewicz

Fenton House, on the crest of Windmill Hill, Hampstead, houses among the most interesting and eclectic gatherings of ceramics in the care of the National Trust. Strong in both oriental and European examples, the collection is a reflection of early twentieth-century taste. (1) When the Trust was left the collection by Katherine, Lady Binning (1871-1952) on her death, much of the European porcelain was displayed in illuminated, glazed cabinets in the first floor Drawing Room, then known as the China Room. It is in this room, redecorated in 1973 as the Drawing Room by John Fowler (1906-78), that today's visitor can admire a photograph of Lady Binning (Fig. 1), surrounded by the collection she helped to form.

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It was not Lady Binning alone, however, who was responsible for assembling the collection as it is today. Born Katherine Augusta Salting in 1871, she was the only child of William Severin Salting. His elder brother, George Salting, was a famous late nineteenth-century collector, who on his death in 1909 bequeathed much of his collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum. He was a noted collector of oriental ceramics and much of the blue and white currently shown in the Blue Porcelain Room at Fenton House--formerly Lady Binning's bedroom--was no doubt from his collection, for Katherine was the residuary beneficiary of his estate. Katherine married George Baillie-Hamilton, Lord Binning, in 1892, but he died in 1917 before he could succeed to the title of Earl of Haddington. Widowed in her mid-forties, she spent much of her time in Scotland at Tyningham, East Lothian, one of her husband's family's houses. Although she bought Fenton House in 1934, she did not take up residence there until 1937, and continued to spend part of each year in Scotland. During her lifetime, the collections at Fenton House included furniture and objects brought from Scotland that were to return to her husband's family on her death. Lady Binning's mother, Millicent Salting, appears to have had a strong influence on her taste. A descriptive inventory, prepared by George Stoner of the St James's dealers Stoner & Evans, gives a detailed account of the contents of Millicent Salting's house, 49 Berkeley Square, in 1914; (2) many of these items are now at Fenton House. Although she clearly collected in her own right, it appears that George Stoner was Millicent Salting's adviser until her death in 1924. Moreover, several pieces are known to have been acquired at auction by Stoner after George Salting's death, and in any case European porcelain was a category apparently not collected by him. It therefore seems likely that pieces now at Fenton not in the 1914 inventory were either subsequently purchased by Millicent Salting or later still by Lady Binning. (3) The collection today is particularly rich in figures and groups, mostly displayed in two glazed wall cabinets in the ground floor Porcelain Room and in vitrines in the first floor Drawing Room; it is these small-scale sculptures that are the subject of this article.

From the earliest days of porcelain manufacture in Europe, the concept of portraying the human figure, or modelling animals and birds, in this easily malleable material was seized upon as an important and commercial part of a factory's production. Johann Friedrich Bottger (1682-1719) initially discovered how to make a red stoneware and subsequently created the first white hard paste porcelain at Meissen, was quick to exploit these new materials for figurative work. The red stoneware was developed in collaboration with Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651-1708), court scientist to Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (1694-1733). Some early essays in figure modelling of c. 1710-12 depict commedia dell'arte figures modelled by Balthasar Permoser, Benjamin Thomae or Paul Heermann, as well as a slightly later chess piece by Johann Joachim Kretzschmar, depicting the owner of the Meissen factory, Augustus the Strong, grandiosely portrayed in Roman dress. (4) These grandly baroque pieces in polished red stoneware are precursors of the white porcelain that was to follow in the 1730s and 40s. At that time, simple, seated oriental 'pagoda' figures were made, inspired by blanc de Chine originals from Dehua in the Fujian province of south-east China. As well as contemporary bronzes and ivories, engravings were also being used as design sources. An early example of this is the grotesque teapot in the collection (Fig. 2), whose decoration is taken from an engraving by Francoise Bouzonnet Stella in the Livre de vases (1667), which comprises designs by her uncle Jacques Stella (1596-1657). It is thought to have been modelled by the sculptor Johann Gottlieb Kirchner (b. 1706) in the early 1720s, and only subsequently decorated at the Augsburg workshop of the Seuter family, about ten years later. (5)

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After Bottger's death in 1719, the Meissen factory made rapid progress and was placed on a sounder commercial footing with the employment of Johann Gregor Horoldt (1696-1775), who--with such colleagues as Samuel Stolzel, a chemist who had been instrumental in bringing Horoldt to Meissen--developed a novel style of painting, using a broad palette and a range of ground colours hitherto unknown on porcelain. Horoldt's star rose rapidly, he was appointed Hofmaler (Court Painter) in 1724, and by 1731 was in the powerful position of Court Superintendent, with thirty painters and ten apprentices working under him as well as sculptors and potters; better yet, the factory's output had trebled. Meanwhile, the figure sculpture had not developed as dramatically as the wares. Kirchner was appointed in 1727 to work on modelling porcelain for the Japanese Palace but proved wayward and was asked to leave. He was taken on again in 1730 to begin work, together with the soon-to-be appointed Johann Joachim Kandler (1706-75), on the celebrated series of large animals and birds. It was Kandler, however, who, arriving at Meissen in 1731, was to change the emphasis of the factory's modelling with far-reaching effects across Europe. After the King's death in 1733, Kirchner was dismissed and Kandler had a free hand to explore his talent for modelling. Kandler had been used to working in both stone and wood, having served under Thomae, and soon acquired the skill to work with the hard, bright, white material of porcelain.