Glazed porcelain, late 19th century - Lot 213

Glazed porcelain, late 19th century A solid, roughly cylindrical tobacco jar, described as “multi-faced,” featuring, on its body, the heads of a man with blue eyes and brown hair (including a full head of hair, sideburns, and a goatee); another of the same man, but with a more ape-like appearance, smoking a cigar; and a third, a real monkey, grimacing as he chews on a pipe. The wide red cap, with a green border and pom-poms, which covers these three heads, serves as a lid. The sculptor clearly alluded to the Darwinian concept of evolution, but in the opposite direction from what one might imagine, since it is the monkey who wears a wing collar and a knotted red tie, and it is the man’s neck that is adorned with a necklace. Is this simply misanthropy, or a satire targeting this theory, which was far from universally accepted at the time? Marked on the base with 451 (the mold number) and LS engraved: either, according to Horowitz, for Luise Spanning, a ceramic artist at the Vienna Werkstätte, active until 1920 or for the Kreusen factory in Bavaria or for Lancaster & Sons, Dresden, 1900–1944. Height: 14.5 cm