Paris porcelain vases with scenes of Amsterdam and Brussels

The vases in this pair are of column krater form, their ovoid bodies sitting on a waisted socle that stands upon a square plinth. The body of each vase opens into a wide, lipped rim, and is mounted with upright, scrolling twin handles. The vases are heavily gilt in the Paris porcelain manner: the plinths, socles, handles, and ground of the body of each vase is profusely gilded. The bottom of the body of each vase, as well as each vases's plinth and socle, is made of giltwood.

The front of each vase features a different painted scene set within a rectangular cartouche encompassed by a band of tooled gilt palmettes. On one vase, the scene is of Amsterdam. The view of Dam Square includes the façade of the Royal Palace of Amsterdam and the apse of the Nieuwe Kerk. The painting is in the manner of the 17^th Century Dutch artist Jan van der Heyden and is inscribed beneath ‘Palais du Roÿ a Amsterdam’. The second vase features a painting of Brussels in a likewise antiquated style to the Amsterdam scene and is similarly inscribed beneath ‘Hotel de Ville a Bruxelles’. On the opposite side of each vase to the painted scene is an elaborate selection of classicising motifs, such as lyres and laurels, wrought in gilt into an intricate composition and set against the white ground of the porcelain.