Chelsea Red Anchor Period Wine Cooler

Meissen wine / champagne cooler in hand-painted porcelain with flowers and gold edge. Handles are modelled as branches. Early 20th century. Me...

Herend Chinese Bouquet Raspberry. Two wine coolers in hand-painted porcelain modelled with handles. Pink flowers and gold decoration. ...

A very fine quality English Regency period wine cooler. Made of maple with inlays in walnut and satinwood. Brass insert with handles. Raised on...

An oval mahogany wine cooler, George III period, circa 1790. With excellent, unrestored, deep, rich color and patination, and original solid-brass carrying handles to either side. This smart Georgian wine cooler (cellaret or cellarette) retains its original waxed surface and patina. It is brass-bound (of coopered construction) supported on its separate, original stand. Raised on square tapering legs terminating in its original brass cappings and castors. It can be also used as a small side table or lamp table. Comes with a bespoke, clear, safety glass cover. Nb. An antique oval wine cooler of this design is quite rare, and makes a very elegant addition to a dining room sideboard, or an occasional table in a drawing room. By removing the top, some examples of this form of wine cooler were often later converted to be used as jardinières. See Christies, 23rd May 2013, lot 23: a mahogany oval wine cooler sold @ £17,500. Literature: Ralph Edwards CBE FSA 'Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture', Hamlyn, London (Fourth Impression 1972) p. 640: “In late Georgian times the wine cooler was generally a plain mahogany tub hooped with brass and standing on four legs. Mary Kenyon in a letter to her mother (October 30th 1775) wrote that among the furniture in the parlour of her new house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields was a ''handsome cistern of mahogany with brass hoops etc. under the sideboard”. A typical example of a brass-bound wine cooler is shown in a picture by Zoffany, representing William Ferguson...

Of coffered form with reeded and canted corners and inset panels to the four sides raised on hairy paw feet, with original zinc liner.

Darte Frères, Paris, made, circa 1820. Porcelain, partially painted and gilded. Measures: 14 1/4 in. high, 10 3/8 in. wide (through the handles), 7 3/4 in. deep. Signed (with stencil, in black, on the bottom of each): Darte. f. Recorded: cf. Régine de Plinval de Guillebon, Porcelain of Paris, 1770–1850 (New York: Walker and Company, 1972), p. 333 no. 79 illustrates the mark on these coolers. Some of the most beautiful porcelain produced in Paris during the Empire/Restauration periods was made or sold by the firm of Darte Frères. Although the Darte family, which came from Namur, then in The Netherlands, had set themselves up in the business of the manufacture of porcelain as early as 1794–95, by 1803 the three Darte brothers had decided, as Régine de Plinval de Guillebon notes (ibid., p. 231), that “each should have his own establishment,” and, indeed, by 1804 their prior business partnership had been “annulled,” and from that point forward there were two businesses using the name Darte. The Darte brothers, Louis Joseph and Jean François, began independent operation in 1804 at the Hôtel Montalembert, at 90, rue de la Roquette. Their business arrangements were only formalized in 1808, at which time they began to use the name “Darte Frères.” They remained in the business until 1825, when their partnership was dissolved. Darte Frères produced a large variety of porcelain, including vast dinner and...