19th-century painted and glazed stoneware with platinum high - Lot 135

19th-century painted and glazed stoneware with platinum highlights A large tobacco jar depicting a traveler seated against a tree trunk—which is the jar itself—on top of which a child, likely the object of his thoughts, is crouching, serving as a handle. To his right, a basket on which he has placed his walking stick and his upturned top hat, and to his left, a hollowed-out tree trunk, serve as compartments for matches. On the base of this ensemble is a scraper. Marked, within a cartouche, with the intertwined letters V and B for Villeroy & Boch and the numbers 337 and 2. This stoneware pot also exists without the platinum highlights, which may be a variant or a later addition. It appears that the use of this precious metal by the decorators at this factory was not unusual, since a pot with Gothic decoration, on display at the Mettlach Museum, is also adorned with it. Chips and missing pieces. H 18 cm