A pair of Louis XVI gilt bronze and apple-green glazed Sèvres porcelain pot pourri vases and covers

circa 1770

Footnotes

The fashion for mounting porcelain made in Europe in the second quarter of the 18th century was initially limited to the wares made at the Meissen factory in Germany. However, the establishment of the Sèvres manufactory in 1756 after the royal charters of 1745 and 1753 allowed the production of porcelain in the Meissen style with gold decoration in France. Greatly influenced by Louis XV's mistress, Madam de Pompadour, the wares which were produced for the French court featured distinctive bold and pastel ground colours. Sometimes painted with scenic, figural, and floral subjects and richly gilded, the wares included but were not confined to services, ornamental vases, and decorative plaques, some used as inlay for furniture.

Although Sèvres initially made porcelain of the soft paste kind, the factory moved over to the production of hard paste porcelain from 1769 and completed this process in around 1804. The bodies of the current lot are coloured in a highly attractive apple green and the early neo-classical gilt bronze mounts feature laurel wreath cast socle pedestals with cut cornered key bordered shallow plinths, acanthus scrolling handles and foliate knopped covers, all in the transitional Louis XVI style dating them to around 1770. Undoubtedly mounted by one of the Parisian dealers known as the marchands-merciers who were famed for retailing a vast range of luxury goods and furnishings assembled from components made by the best craftsman and sculptors, the vases may well have been retailed by a number of notable figures including Edme- Francois Gersaint, Lazare Duvaux or Simon-Philippe Poirier. Pot-pourri vases of the type in the above lot were used in pairs or sometimes as a garniture with a large decorative vase or clock flanked by the vases to scent the rooms of wealthy and noble houses with the aromas of flowers, herbs and spices.

Popularly used in the winter when rooms were heated and the windows were left unopened, the vases were placed on the chimneypiece to either end of the mantel as was the fashion so that the oils within the contents would be released into the air by the heat rising from the fire. The scented mixtures for use domestically were originally dried in unglazed pots as the dry clay body would absorb the moisture of the contents and some of the essential oils. As such they were not used for any other purpose as the clay pots were spoiled so they became known as 'spoiled pots' and later this name was then taken to be used for the vases themselves – 'pot pourri' and these were made in a variety of materials including porcelain, pottery, bronze or lacquer.

Comparable Vases
For a pair of comparable vases see G. & R Wannenes, Les bronzes
ornementaux et les objets montés de Louis XIV à Napoléon III, Milan,
2004, pp. 336-337

Related Literature
H. Wynter, An Introduction to European Porcelain, New York, 1991,
pp. 87-88.