An extremely fine pair of Louis XVI gilt bronze mounted bleu celeste Sèvres porcelain pot-pourri vases and covers, each of the porcelain bodies and cover decorated with pink roses within foliate-wreath reserves on a bleu celeste ground, the cover with a pinecone finial above a chain scroll band and pierced ovolu frieze, flanked by squared pierced handles supported on lion head masks on a waisted acanthus and laurel leaf foot upon a square base

Paris, date circa 1770

Height 29 cm. each.

The Sèvres factory produced vases à monter, or vases intended to be fitted with gilt bronze mounts, from about 1764. Intended to be assembled as garnitures the vases were of three different forms; two of them of differing dimensions were like these of tapering cylindrical form while the third was egg-shaped. The finished glazed vases were generally then sold to the marchand-merciers who adorned them with bronze mounts. The earlier vases were glazed in solid ground colours, particularly blue and green, however historic invoices show that by 1770 some pieces decorated with green and blue grounds were scattered with foliate wreaths centred by roses.

The vases or goblets cloches are adorned with mounts of one of five basic styles which indicate that in all likelihood the marchand-merciers who purchased the vases à monter produced their own stylised mounts. A complete garniture incorporating a pair of egg-form vases, a pair of small cylindrical and one large cylindrical vase is in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford (see Linda H. Roth and Clare Le Corbeiller, "French Eighteenth Century Porcelain at the Wadsworth Atheneum: The J. Pierpont Morgan Collection", 2000, p. 156, fig. 74.).

In his discussion of the garniture once belonging to Mme. Jules Fribourg, S. Eriksen refers to another set of vases from the collection of Erich von Goldschmidt-Rothschild (sold Ball und Graupe, Berlin, 23rd March 1931, lot 206) which bore the date letter for 1769. A very closely related green ground garniture, with a single vase of this model and size, was in the collection of the Earls of Sefton, Croxteth Hall (sold by Christie's, 17-20th September 1973, lot 908). Very closely related pairs with minor variations to the mounts were in the Keck Collection, La Lanterne, Bel Air, California (sold Sotheby's New York, 4th December 1991, lot 225) as well as in the collection of the Marquesses of Cholmondeley, Houghton, Norfolk, (sold Christie's London, 8th December 1994, lot 38).