Literature

When hard-paste porcelain, that is to say porcelain made with a kaolin body, went into commercial production at Sèvres in 1773 they also started to develop new colours and schemes of decoration. These vases are such pieces with an exciting and novel mauve ground colour and the lavish painted decoration of stone vases of flowers set on marble table tops.* line return Hard-paste wares were launched in December 1774 at the annual end-of-year presentation by the Sèvres factory at Versailles to the King and Court of their newest work. Louis XV bought his first hard-paste porcelain pieces then; a garniture of three vases which had a red ground colour and painted scenes of Turkish figures.

It is rarely possible to identify specific vases in the Sèvres factory's sales records in the 1770s so we do not know for whom they were made. This shape of vase was made with various handle and finial shapes as well as sometimes with mouldings applied to the body. The shape was identified by Dame Rosalind Savill and Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue as being called a 'vase à batons rompus' when being made. They established that the shape was made from 1763 as they were cataloguing soft paste examples in the Wallace Collection and in the British Royal Collection. This is the only known pair of this shape made in hard-paste porcelain.