Limited Masterworks Dormouse bowl

If you had to name the definitive color for porcelain, it would just have to be "bleu ordinaire". Augustus the Strong was willing to reward anyone capable of producing this magical cobalt blue - the most renowned of all underglaze colors - to the tune of a colossal 1,000 thalers, since only then could his dream of domestic porcelains to rival those from Asia he owned come true. Only once it has been fired, however, does the paint applied to the greenware body assume the intense, luminous blue color so characteristic of many MEISSEN decorative schemes, notable amongst them the "Blue Onion". Underglaze painting is an age-old skill only mastered to the absolute peak of perfection by specialists like Ulrich Mehner. His richly detailed scene from nature spills over from the outside to the inside of the bowl - a particularly exacting task, since the inner surface is difficult to work with a brush. A lively group of a dormouse, a lizard, a salamander, various butterflies and beetles, and a few industrious ants are to be seen moving about amongst flowering sprays, an apple and radishes. The shape of the bowl is as unique as its decorative detail: it has been freely thrown by hand, which is very rarely done these days, making each bowl a precious one-off. A golden decorative rim adds the finishing touch to Mehner's pattern in this iconic MEISSEN color, a trailblazer from Persia to China and from Japan to the Netherlands with an impressive track record stretching back many hundreds of years.