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An extremely fine pair of Louis XV Sèvres gilt painted bleu-céleste porcelain pot-pourri covered vases, marked on the base with interlaced L’s and date letter ‘c’, with splendid later nineteenth century gilt bronze mounts, each vase and cover with a bleu-céleste ground and finely gilt foliate scrolled borders enclosing oval reserves, the two on the vase painted with pairs of exotic birds set among finely painted trees and flowering plants, the two on the cover each with corresponding gilt painted borders enclosing painted floral and foliate sprays, the cover with an entwined scrolled handle, the vase decorated on the interior with a delicate scrolled and trailing foliate gilt border, the later gilt bronze mounts comprising a surmounting gilt bronze monkey above a pierced gadrooned entrelac border flanked either side by mounted ram’s heads above columnar supports terminating in foliate wrapped scrolled feet and two further arrow-headed supports connected above by a panelled fluted ring and below by a shaped ring on a shaped oval base mounted with rosettes above the four bun feet
Paris, the porcelain dated 1755, the bronze mounts nineteenth century
Height 25.2 cm, width 21 cm, depth 13 cm.
This very fine pair of Sèvres vases, marked with the date letter C for 1755 were later adapted during the nineteenth century to include gilt bronze mounts so that they could be used as pot-pourris. The painted porcelain decoration compares closely in style with a Sèvres bleu-céleste cuvette à tombeau vase in the J. P. Getty Museum (illustrated and discussed in Adrian Sassoon, “The J. Paul Getty Museum, Vincennes and Sèvres Porcelain, Catalogue of the Collection”, 1991, pp. 8-11). The latter piece dated 1754-55 bears the crescent painter’s mark (who is as yet unidentified); as here it features very elaborate gilded frames surrounding oval reserves, which likewise feature exotic birds perched in a tree amid flowers and foliage.
The bleu-céleste ground was introduced during 1753 by the chemist Hellot. He developed this colour by using an aquamarine pigment imported from Venice. Because it had a high copper content this particular colour tended to absorb the gilding during firing, for this reason gilding had to be applied at least twice over the bleu céleste ground.
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