Shaped like a human arm, protruding from a flat base which forms a sleeve. The hand is partially clenched to provide a hole in the middle, through which a metal candlestick could be fitted. The sconce is decorated in overglaze enamels of the famille rose palette, including green, blue and red. The arms is painted with pale peach enamel.
For a development on this form, see Jorge Welsh, Out of the Ordinary – Living with Chinese Export Porcelain, pp. 230 /237, nos. 75/76.
Similar examples are in the collection of the Princessehof National Museum of Ceramics in Leeuwarden (The Netherlands), or in the Metropolitan Museum (New York).
A further example is illustrated by David Howard in China for the West: Chinese Porcelain and Other Decorative Arts for Export Illustrated from the Mottahedeh Collection, 1978, T. I, p. 177, no. 172.
Examples could be also found in Canton painted enamels on copper.
Chinese Export porcelain sconces may have been copied from a metal prototype, there is for example, an English silver sconce dating to the late 17th c. with a comparable shape in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.
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