Limited Masterworks Vase Formalised Meadow of Flowers

Porcelain painter Anett Gerner adopts a new approach to classic indianisch painting, one of the manufactory's oldest decorative schemes. She spirits a meadow of spring flowers in purples, blues and yellows onto this bulbous vase modelled in the 1920s by art nouveau artist Adelbert Niemeyer, a vase that is being re-issued here for the first time. In the manner we have grown accustomed to in indianisch painting, there is a diagrammatic symmetry to the finely-detailed decoration that can only be achieved through the combined use of pen and brush.

Once the flowers and foliage have been painted on and fired, Anett Gerner covers these areas over with lacquer and dabs a pale green enamel onto the white porcelain areas by hand to gradually create the effect of an incomparable ocean of flowers in a springtime meadow. The pattern's elegance is further enhanced by leaves in gleaming gold and the delicate black veins that permeate them.

The first Meissen porcelains with stylised portrayals of animals and plants produced early on at the manufactory sought to emulate the coveted works of East Asia and reflected the dreamy notions of the Middle Kingdom the Europeans then tended to entertain. However, the palette of luminous overglaze colours formulated by the porcelain painter Johann Gregorius Höroldt soon facilitated painting of an intensity that even outshone that of its Chinese forbears - and gave rise in this great classic amongst patterns from MEISSEN.