A pair of Sèvres vases à monter

A pair of Louis XVI gilt bronze-mounted Royal Sèvres manufactory green-ground hard paste porcelain vases à monter, the porcelain circa 1785, the mounts late 18^th Century, attributed to Thomire

 Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751-1843), maître in 1772

Height: 22 cm. (8 ¾ in.)

Comparative Literature

R. Savill, The Wallace Collection. Catalogue of Sèvres Porcelain, London, 19888, vol. I, p. 469.

 The arabesque border decoration on these vases may have been inspired by engravings after Raphael’s Loggia in the Vatican, Rome. It is reserved against a rare dark-green ground which was probably introduced in the late 1770s or early 1780s when new ground colours were being developed for use on hard-paste porcelain. Various names appearing in the Sèvres records have been associated with this colour, including ‘merde d’oie’ and ‘fond Boue de Paris’. However, David Peters has identified the most likely candidate as ‘verd [vert] anglais‘.

 The vases belong to the production at Sèvres of vases à monter, intended to be enriched with gilt bronze mounts. They were initially sold in the 1770s exclusively to Parisian marchands-merciers who then arranged the mounts. However, Sèvres soon brought this element of production in-house, with Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751-1843) assuming the role as the manufacture’s bronzier in 1783. Thomire was amongst the most celebrated bronzier-ciseleurs of the period and these mounts with their delicately chased details and rich gilding are typical of his work in the mid-1780s.

 The basic urn-shaped form of the vases appears in three drawings for a ‘vase à monter‘ (the first of 1782 and the second two dating to 1785, both preserved in the Sèvres archive), each inscribed ‘pour M. Daguerre‘ and specifically designed to be mounted with gilt bronze. Two of the drawings are illustrated in Savill, op. cit., p. 469, where the model is discussed in detail.