Decoration with ostrich eggs

This original decoration was made by using an Oriental round panel decorated with lacquer, four ostrich eggs and red wool yarn. Photographs from the early twentieth century show that it was displayed in one of the rooms of the Chinese Apartment, designed at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Stanisław Kostka Potocki. The Apartment was to present a diverse and large collection of art from the Far East, with the walls decorated with Oriental wallpaper, graphic works and pseudo-Chinese paintings. Large glassed-in cupboards, console tables and pedestals featured porcelain sculptures and small objects of daily use. The whole arrangement was supplemented with furniture, as a rule produced in Europe and modelled on the Far East; some pieces had been made in Wilanów.