Literature

With the factory mark in gilding and the date letters ee for 1782. Set on its original gilt-bronze base.

This is a rare example of the tinted hard-paste porcelain called 'gris agate' in the Sèvres factory records. We know a pair of Vases now at the Château of Fontainbleu with this paste and also Adrian Sassoon twice sold a set of three large gilt-bronze mounted vases made with the same body. All date from around the same years.

This shape of vase was first produced around 1775, copying the shape seen in an engraving by Pierre-Elisabeth de Fontanieu, the Intendant of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne. The engraving depicts a vase sculpted with a high relief bacchic mask surrounded by grapes with the upper part of the body fluted. Such a vase was first produced at the Sèvres porcelain manufactory moulded with swans in relief in the manner of the Meissen Swan service - a pair known from being sold at auction in 1977.

The simpler version with no moulded decoration is only known from the present example and a drawing for this shape survives in the Sèvres archives [2011.3.524].