Doll’s House five piece miniature garniture from the Ca Mau Cargo, c.1725
A doll’s house five-piece garniture, 2½” tall, of alternate baluster and double gourd form, decorated in underglaze blue with flower sprays.
Recovered from the wreck of a Chinese trading vessel which sank off the Ca Mau peninsula in the Binh Thuan Province of south Vietnam and sold at Sotheby’s Amsterdam in January 2007. The sale contained nine lots with doll’s house garnitures, all of the same design, and two further lots containing damaged pieces only. Each of the five with Sotheby’s numbered labels.
Vase garnitures were a particular feature of interior decoration in Dutch houses in the late 17th century and have been found in both the Vung Tau cargo of c.1695 and the Ca Mau cargo of c.1725.
In the 17th century the doll’s house was a respected hobby for women, a counterpart to the male kunstkabinett, or cabinet of curiosities. Three magnificent dolls’ houses in the Rijksmuseum give a fascinating insight into how affluent houses of this period were furnished. The most famous of these was owned by Petronella Oortman of Amsterdam who decorated it between 1686 and 1710, specially commissioning all the furnishings to be of authentic materials and provenance, and to be made to an exact scaled proportion of the original items. This included miniature porcelain ordered from China which can be seen in a cabinet in a downstairs parlour.
Reference : Sotheby’s Amsterdam, Made in Imperial China, sale catalogue, 29-31 January 2007, with introductory essays by Dr Nguyen Dinh Chien, Paul A. Van Dyke and Professor Dr Christiaan J. A. Jorg.
Condition : In generally good condition with a matt glaze from submersion for almost 300 years.
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