?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
MARCO-POLO TEE. Circa 1914. 431/4x29 inches. Leipzig, Munich. Condition B+: repaired tears and overpainting in margins. Among Hohlwein's regular clients were two important companies that sold high quality, luxury comestibles: Riquet, a coffee and chocolate company, and Frank Kathreiner, for whom he designed posters advertising Atlas Salad Oil, Kathreiner Wein and Marco Polo Tea. Between 1910 and 1930 he created at least five posters for this last brand, visually evoking the different countries from which the tea was imported. His first poster featured a Chinese servant dressed in blue (see Swann Modernist Posters sale #1935, lot 14). He followed with posters featuring a Japanese woman, a Japanese geisha in profile, a native of Ceylon and lastly this image of a Chinese Mandarin. During the first World War, he adapted the image for the times and depicted a cavalry soldier serving tea. Here, using his mastery of watercolors, Hohlwein depicts a wizened Chinese man with tea bags in his lap. Frenzel, full color plate.
