Of ovoid shape with snake handle, applied with lizards, shells, a butterfly, a beetle, ferns and laurel leaves in relief on a blue and purple mottled ground, the underside with printed labels variously inscribed ‘Collection Spitzer 1893’, ‘P. 48 /E. de R./ 75’ for Édouard de Rothschild and ‘Einsatzstab R nr. 4148’
14³⁄₄ in. (31.5 cm.) high

Frédéric Spitzer collection (1815-1890); Paris, Me Paul Chevalier, 17 April–16 June 1893, lot 633, pl. XVIII (sold for 3,100 French francs).
Baron Alphonse de Rothschild (1827-1905).
Baron Édouard de Rothschild (1868-1949).
Confiscated from the above by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg following the Nazi occupation of France in May 1940 (ERR no. R 4148).
Recovered by the Monuments Fine Arts and Archives Section from the Altaussee salt mines, Austria, and transferred to the Munich Central Collecting Point, 23 June 1945 (MCCP no. 337/3).
Returned to France on 9 January 1946 and restituted to the Rothschild family.
By descent to the present owners.

Emile Molinier, La Collection Spitzer, Paris, 1891, T. II, no. 45, pl. VII.
Germaine de Rothschild, Serge Grandjean, Bernard Palissy et son école, Paris, 1952, pl. 3, no. III.

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Lot Essay

A similar ewer was in the collection of Andrew Fountaine IV (1808-1873), (see Alexandre Sauzay, Henri Delange, Carle Delange and C. Borneman, Monographie de l'oeuvre de Bernard Palissy suivie d'un choix de ses continuateurs ou imitateurs, Paris, 1862, pl. 9 and the Fountaine sale, Christie's, London, 16-19 June 1884, lot 240), and another from the Pourtalès Collection is now preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The posthumous inventory of Catherine de' Médici in 1589 mentions the presence of 'Quatre buyes façon de jaspe', [four ewers imitating jasper] (no. 765). In 1874, Edmond Bonnafé made a link between this mention and the ewers in the Baron Alphonse de Rothschild collection (Edmond Bonnafé, Inventaire après décès de Catherine de Médicis en 1589, Paris, 1874, p. 145).

COMPARABLE LITERATURE
Alexandre Sauzay, Henri Delange, Carle Delange and C. Borneman, Monographie de l'oeuvre de Bernard Palissy suivie d'un choix de ses continuateurs ou imitateurs, Paris, 1862, pl. 9.
Alfred Tainturier, Les terres émaillées de Bernard Palissy inventeur des rustiques figulines, Paris, 1863, p. 76, no. 23