Pair of French ormolu mounted Sèvres style porcelain vases
Style of Sèvres (French, founded 1738)
£32,000
These excellent and extremely large porcelain vases feature beautifully painted still life scenes of flowers, set against the classic dark Sèvres blue ground.
The vases in this pair are of ovoid baluster form and each one is mounted at the sides with twin porcelain parcel gilt handles that take the shape of scrolling acanthus leaves. The vases are set on waisted ormolu (gilt bronze) socles, which sit upon blue-ground porcelain socles, all standing upon round ormolu bases, the bases cast in the form of circular laurel garlands. The central cartouches on the body of each vase show still-life depictions of a bouquet of flowers in a basket on a table, all executed in Rococo pastel shades of pink, green, blue, and red. The front and reverse cartouches are the same on each vase, and each is set inside a gilt border of scrolling foliage on Sèvres blue, or cobalt blue, ground.
Each vase has a conforming lid that is decorated with mounted ormolu foliage around the rim and is surmounted by an ormolu pine cone finial. The undersides of the vases are marked with the interlaced-L mark for Sèvres.