A very fine pair of Empire gilt and white Paris Porcelain rhyton vases, each formed as an antique cornucopia rhyton-shaped vase terminated by a white glazed boar’s head with gilded snout, tusks and ears to simulate gilt bronze, the lower body of the gilded vase adorned with white acanthus leaves and scrolls below tessellated decoration headed by palmettes around its neck with a gilded splayed egg and dart rim to the vase, the whole upon a rectangular gilded base applied with white mounts of conjoined wings and palmettes and scrolls Paris, date circa 1810 Height 24 cm, width 22.5 cm, depth 8 cm. each. The design of these striking vases take the form of ancient Roman drinking vessels known as rhytons, formed as cornucopiae and terminated by an animal head, sometimes as here by a boar’s head but on other occasions by that of a ram. The inspiration for such antique forms may have been based on engravings of the originals by such artists as Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) or those by Nicolas Xavier Willemin (1763-1833), whose “Collection de plus beaux ouverages de l’antiquité”, published sometime before the abolition of the monarchy in 1792 included a numerous ancient furnishings, artefacts and architectural ornaments including an Etruscan horn-shaped rhyton. Another indirect inspiration for such vases may have been two cornucopiae from the Borghese collection which entered the Louvre in 1808. However the most direct inspiration for their design was almost certainly based on similar porcelain rhyton vases created by Sèvres. With additional floral and fruiting swags and a frieze of putti around the neck of the vase, they were of the same overall design and as here had a boar’s head and were painted to simulate precious metals and stones. In the case of Sèvres they were gilded and painted blue in imitation of lapis lazuli, which like the gilding here stood out against a contrasting colour. The first pair of Sèvres rhyton vases (now in the Armoury Museum in Moscow) was designed by Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart (1739–1813), father of the director of the factory Alexandre Brongniart (1770–1847). Completed in 1806 they were intended to form the centrepiece of the Olympic Service which was given by the Emperor Napoleon to Tsar Alexander I to mark the signing of the Tilsit Treaty. A second pair was finished in 1807 and again sent to Russia but are now housed in France in the Mobilier National while two more (now in the Musée du Louvre) were completed in 1813 and given as gifts to two of the dames du palais de l’Impératrice, namely the duchesse de Rovigo and the comtesse de Montalivet. It is known that the unglazed biscuit for the latter pair was modelled by Jean-Charles Blanchard after which the decoration was painted by Charles-Théodore Bouteux and then finally the lapis ground was added by Godin and Huré. A number of independent Paris Porcelain factories also created similar models in imitation of those by Sèvres as did the Coussac-Bonneval factory in Limoges, which was founded in 1827 by the marquis de Bonneval, a friend of King Charles X. A similar pair by the Coussac-Bonneval factory is in the Musée National Adrien Dubouché in Limoges; as here they feature rhyton-shaped vases with a boar’s head but are raised on more overt scrolls and are mounted on the base by a reclining putto flanked by flaming torches. Similar rhytons, again with a boar’s head were made into gilt bronze as chenets for instance those by the Parisian ciseleur-doreur Pierre-François Feuchère (1737-1823) in 1817, of which there are a pair in the Schösserverwaltung, Würzburg (illustrated in Hans Ottomeyer and Peter Pröschel, “Vergoldete Bronzen”, 1986, p. 341, pl. 5.4.7).