THE MOUNTS ATTRIBUTED TO PIERRE-PHILIPPE THOMIRE, THE PORCELAIN CIRCA 1810

Details

AN EMPIRE ORMOLU-MOUNTED SEVRES (HARD PASTE) DARK-BLUE GROUND OVIFORM VASE
The mounts attributed to Pierre-Philippe Thomire, the porcelain circa 1810
The everted stiff-leaf rim with twin patera-enriched handles terminating in bearded satyr masks, the body cradled in a berried stiff-leaf cup, above a pinched and gadrooned socle with stiff-leaf moulded plinth and square base, with 19th Century paper label inscribed '4 D', the porcelain apparently unmarked, the gilding probably original, originally with a porcelain lid
15½ in. (39.5 cm.) high

Provenance

Almost certainly bought by Thomas, 2nd Marquess of Bath (1765-1837) for Longleat, Wiltshire and by descent at Longleat.

Literature

1837 Inventory, No. 64 Drawing Room, 'Blue Vase and Two Urns mounted in Ormolu'.
1852 Inventory, No. 61 Drawing Room, 'Blue Vase and two Urns mounted in Ormolu'.
1896 Inventory (2nd Marquess' Heirlooms), f 77 r 'A set of three old Sevres porcelain vases of gros bleu heavily mounted gilt ormolu Louis XVI period with scroll handles on square bases chased with foliage and fruit'.
C. Hussey, 'Longleat, Wiltshire-IV', Country Life, 29 April 1949, p. 991, fig. 3.
H. Granville Fell (ed.), The Connoisseur Year Book, 1951, London, p. 41, fig. VI.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Lot Essay

This 'krater'-form vase, designed in the Grecian style promoted by the connoisseur/collector Thomas Hope in his Duchess Street mansion museum, is characteristic of examples produced at Sèvres in the first years of the Empire. A similar vase oeuf, but of larger scale (1.14m high), decorated en fond écaille and manufactured at Sèvres in 1802-3 (18 fructidor an XI), was acquired by the Garde-Meuble Impérial in March 1810 for the château de Compiègne. Placed in the second salon du Roi de Rome in 1811, the socle was obviously unable to safely support the scale of the vase, and it was repaired by 1817, when it was placed in the appartements of the comte d'Artois. This latter vase displays closely related handles en rouleau terminating in Medusa masks, which were executed by Pierre-Philippe Thomire at a cost of 600 F (illustrated in B. Ducrot, Porcelaines et Terres de Sèvres, Paris, 1993, no. 2, p. 51).

On the death of Jean-Claude-Thomas Chambellan-Duplessis (d.1773), Pierre-Philippe Thomire assumed the role of bronzier at the Sèvres manufactory. The mounts on the Longleat vase, with their distinctive stiff-leaf cup holding the bowl, exceptional chasing and casting, and rich contrast of matt and burnished gilding, are characteristic of Thomire's superlative oeuvre.

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