The present vase is very similar to the Augustus Rex vase in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam⁽¹⁾, although the differences in size and the form of the finials suggests that the two vases were not once part of the same garniture. The sources for the bird decoration on the Rijksmuseum vase are principally the illustrations in Volume I of Eleazar Albin’s A Natural History of Birds, published in London in 1731, which was acquired by the Meissen manufactory in April 1745⁽²⁾. The source for the jay on the cover is not yet known. J.G. Höroldt, head of the painting workshop at Meissen, gave Albin’s book to Häntzschel ‘as it was suitable to his métier and type of painting’, which suggests that he is probably the author of this type of decoration⁽³⁾. Although it has not yet been established whether the birds on the present vase derive from Albin’s publication, the treatment of the small shrubs on which the birds perch is the same as in the Rijksmuseum vase and Albin’s illustrations, suggesting a date for the decoration of 1745, or very shortly after. The Dreher’s marks (and lack of a Pressnummer) on the present vase suggest it was made before 1739. The porcelain of the Rijksmuseum vase similarly appears to be earlier than the decoration, and Ulrich Pietsch illustrates three vases which date to before 1739 in the Iparmúvészeti Múzeum, Budapest, which have related bird decoration of circa 1745.

1. Illustrated by Abraham L. den Blaauwen, Meissen Porcelain in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 2000, pp. 316-317, no. 226.
2. Den Blaauwen, ibid., p. 317.
3. ‘zu seinem Metier und Arth der Mahlerey gehörete’, cited by den Blaauwen, ibid., p. 317 and Ulrich Pietsch in U. Pietsch and C. Banz (eds.), Triumph of the Blue Swords, Porzellansammlung, Zwinger, Dresden, Exhibition Catalogue, Leipzig, 2010, p. 239.