Box with eighty-one game counters
The card game l’Hombre was a fashionable pastime in the eighteenth century, and special boxes were created at the Meissen porcelain manufacture to hold the necessary counters. Five playing cards decorate the lid; the one on top, which represents the King of Hearts, is based on a French deck of cards made for the German market by Claude Valentin of Lyon about 1650. For the Ace of Spades, the painter used an original card bearing the Saxon tax stamp that was imposed on all imported playing cards. The different counters were stored in four small individual boxes, now missing.
Artwork Details
- Title: Box with eighty-one game counters
- Manufactory: Meissen Manufactory (German, 1710–present)
- Date: ca. 1760
- Culture: German, Meissen
- Medium: Hard-paste porcelain
- Dimensions: Overall: 2 3/4 × 4 7/8 × 6 3/4 in. (7 × 12.4 × 17.1 cm)
- Classification: Ceramics-Porcelain
- Credit Line: Bequest of Irwin Untermyer, 1973
- Object Number: 1974.28.134.1a, b–.82
- Curatorial Department: European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
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Multiple artists/makers
ca. 1736
Attributed to Max Freyer & Co.
19th century
Manufactory Meissen Manufactory
ca. 1725
Manufactory Meissen Manufactory
After an engraving by François Joullain
Based on a composition by Jacques Callot
ca. 1741
German, Saxony
ca. 1600
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