The call of the wild is irresistible to artists. For centuries, designers, craftsmen and artisans of all disciplines have sought to bring the animal kingdom into the interior – to capture the essence of nature through their own medium.
European decorative art is littered with representations of birds and animals and perhaps nowhere are they more vividly realised than in porcelain. The china aviaries that we see today on mantlepieces and wall brackets had their beginnings hundreds of years ago and might not exist in the same way without one rather extraordinary character – Augustus the Strong, the elector-king in Saxony and Poland. The ruler was said to have fathered 354 children, to have possessed the strength to break horse shoes with his bare hands and, importantly for us, he suffered with ‘la maladie de porcelaine’ (a porcelain sickness, or obsession).
Augustus had the largest collection of Asian porcelain in Europe (over 29,000 pieces were recorded on his death in 1733). Following the discovery of true ‘hard paste’ porcelain under the Augustus’s rule, the Meissen factory was set up and he was keen to have the very best of its production. He drove the factory to imitate Asian porcelain and also to produce innovative new works in a European taste. The pinnacle of achievement in this early period can be seen in Augustus’s incredible menagerie of life-size birds and animals made in porcelain, known as ‘Japanese Palace’ models. These mirrored Augustus’s real animal enclosures, including a Löwenhaus (lion house), and the many birds and beasts he kept and used for animal fights and hunting, as a form of power-display and entertainment for visiting nobles and foreign powers.
In 1717 Augustus acquired the Holländisches Palais (or Dutch Palace), installing part of his collection there in the same year. Over the coming decades the palace was developed to house and enhance the display of the royal collection, including the grand porcelain menagerie. The porcelain birds and beasts were designed to be life-sized, or near life-sized, and posed huge technical challenges for the factory. Many did not survive the high temperatures of the kiln and most have significant firing cracks or flaws. New expertise was needed and Gottlieb Kirchner was initially employed to create the models, later joined Johann Joachim Kändler in 1731. The latter swiftly surpassed the former in modelling skill – his models were naturalistic and dynamic, where Kirchner’s models were more ‘baroque’ and rigid in feel. Both modellers either studied their subjects from live beasts in the Mortizburg menagerie, or the Dresden Löwenhaus, or sketched them from specimens in the Animaliengalerie at the Zwinger in Dresden.
Today, most of the birds and animals are on display in the Zwinger collection in Dresden (which is well worth the visit for any decorative arts enthusiast), but occasionally a Japanese Palace bird or animal will surface on the market and generate a lot of excitement — as was the case with a pair of guinea fowl at Sotheby’s, which sold for £554,500 at Sotheby’s in 2013, a large model of a bustard by Kirchner, which sold for £842,500 at Christie’s in 2016, and a model of a hen and her chicks, which (smaller than the former) sold for £467,250 in 2018.
Following their royal commission, many of the models were made and adapted in larger quantities for fashionable households all over Europe. Some were sent to France to be mounted up on French ormolu by Parisian ‘marchands-merciers’ and the popularity was such that the birds were copied at many other factories in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Meissen factory itself continued to produce and adapt many of these models and other newer creations throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Indeed, modern versions of these bird models can still be purchased directly from the factory today and there is often little in value to differentiate a 19th, 20th or 21st century model, when they come up for sale at auction. Larger, more colourful and more dynamically modelled parrots tend to be more commercial, particularly if a true pair. This wonderful pair of boldly coloured parrots, sold for £18,750 at Christie’s on 29 November 2016. Their colouring is beautifully matched, their heads inclined toward each other ‘interacting’ and the model numbers incised to the undersides confirm the pairing as ‘A’ and ‘B’ of the same incised number ‘A43’.
Modern, 19th century and 20th century Meissen copies of Japanese palace birds and animals can also fetch large sums. This huge (76.5 cm high) model of a pelican, sold at Christie’s on 31 October 2023 for £17,640 and this Macaw sold at Koller in September 2018 for 13,000 Swiss francs. The better condition pieces will always hold a premium and groups of birds as a ‘ready collection’ can often sell very well.
These porcelain creatures continue to capture the imagination. Today, they offer more than historical curiosity — they bring character, colour, and a touch of the exotic into contemporary interiors. Whether making a bold statement or adding a playful accent, even a single brightly hued parrot can echo the splendour of Augustus’s menagerie in a thoroughly modern way.
