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Lot Essay
The 'C' couronné poinçon was a tax mark employed on any alloy containing copper between March 1745 and February 1749.
These magnificent vases are probably those included in the Catalogue Raisonné of the collection of Monsieur Gaignat, ancien Secrétaire du Roi, & Receveur des Consignations, drawn up by the menuisier Pierre Remy in 1768. Published in Paris, this catalogue is of particular value to historians and connoisseurs, owing to the extraordinary copy owned by the dessinateur Gabriel-Louis de Saint-Aubin, who sketched an illustration of each lot into the margins. Listed under no. 95, a pair of vases is described as:
Deux Urnes coupes, de forme de seau bouteille, couvertes, de même porcelaine, fond céladon, avec animaux & arbustes en bas-reliefs blancs, lisrs d'un filet bleu.
Cet ouvrage est léger, délicat & peu commun, ce qui les rend très singulières: elles sont deux anses, & garnies en bronze ciselé et doré.
While the sketchy nature of Saint-Aubin's illustration to lot 95 makes it impossible to conclude with absolute certainty that the present Alexander/Perenchio vases are indeed the very same as Monsieur Gaignat's, numerous details appear to correspond almost exactly. These include the distinctive profile of the stepped lid, the decoration of the porcelain, with its distinctive sinuous blossoming tree painted against a plain background, and the design of the ormolu mounts, with their unpierced collar and the exaggerated kick of their feet. Based on notes made in copies of the catalogue held in the Getty Research Institute and Philadelphia Art Museum, it appears that Gaignat's vases were, for unknown reason, sold alongside lot 112, a pair of Chinese porcelain elephants, for the sum of 1,080 livres. Tantalizingly, though the Philadelphia catalogue records buyers' names for multiple surrounding lots, it does not preserve the name of the buyer of lot 95.
The Gaignat catalogue also carried the following introductory sentence on the frontispiece: ET celui des Porcelaines rares & anciennes, tant du Japon que de la Chine, de Saxe & de France; Effets de Laques, Meubles précieux & Bijoux, par S. Ph. POIRIER, Marchand. The mention of the marchand-mercier Simon-Philippe Poirier implies an existing and publicized relationship between him and Gaignat, inviting us to speculate that he may have supplied the latter with the present vases. That Poirier was not alone in supplying the Court with these distinctive vases, however, is confirmed in the Livre-Journal of the marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux. On 10 December 1754, he supplied Madame de Pompadour with Deux autres vases d'ancienne porcelaine verte reliefs bleu, mont en bronze doré d'or moulu, 1,700 l.. The high price and infrequent reference to this distinctive type of porcelain suggests that it was both highly prized and admired in the eighteenth century.
A single pot-pourri vase, its porcelain closely related to the present but more densely decorated, and its mounts in a slightly more fully developed Louis XV style, is in the collection of His Majesty the King at Buckingham Palace (RCIN 2306, published in J. Harris, G. de Bellaigue, O. Millar, Buckingham Palace and its Treasures, New York, 1968, p. 188). Unlike the present pair, however, the Buckingham Palace example is mounted with a pierced collar between its body and the cover, a feature which is not described in the Gaignat catalogue description or illustration. In addition, a pair of pot-pourri vases with closely related decoration to the porcelain, but also with later, more fully Louis XV-style mounts and a flat lid, are preserved in the Wrightsman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (F.J.B. Watson, The Wrightsman Collection, New York, 1966, vol. II cat. no. 248 A-B).
These magnificent vases are probably those included in the Catalogue Raisonné of the collection of Monsieur Gaignat, ancien Secrétaire du Roi, & Receveur des Consignations, drawn up by the menuisier Pierre Remy in 1768. Published in Paris, this catalogue is of particular value to historians and connoisseurs, owing to the extraordinary copy owned by the dessinateur Gabriel-Louis de Saint-Aubin, who sketched an illustration of each lot into the margins. Listed under no. 95, a pair of vases is described as:
Deux Urnes coupes, de forme de seau bouteille, couvertes, de même porcelaine, fond céladon, avec animaux & arbustes en bas-reliefs blancs, lisrs d'un filet bleu.
Cet ouvrage est léger, délicat & peu commun, ce qui les rend très singulières: elles sont deux anses, & garnies en bronze ciselé et doré.
While the sketchy nature of Saint-Aubin's illustration to lot 95 makes it impossible to conclude with absolute certainty that the present Alexander/Perenchio vases are indeed the very same as Monsieur Gaignat's, numerous details appear to correspond almost exactly. These include the distinctive profile of the stepped lid, the decoration of the porcelain, with its distinctive sinuous blossoming tree painted against a plain background, and the design of the ormolu mounts, with their unpierced collar and the exaggerated kick of their feet. Based on notes made in copies of the catalogue held in the Getty Research Institute and Philadelphia Art Museum, it appears that Gaignat's vases were, for unknown reason, sold alongside lot 112, a pair of Chinese porcelain elephants, for the sum of 1,080 livres. Tantalizingly, though the Philadelphia catalogue records buyers' names for multiple surrounding lots, it does not preserve the name of the buyer of lot 95.
The Gaignat catalogue also carried the following introductory sentence on the frontispiece: ET celui des Porcelaines rares & anciennes, tant du Japon que de la Chine, de Saxe & de France; Effets de Laques, Meubles précieux & Bijoux, par S. Ph. POIRIER, Marchand. The mention of the marchand-mercier Simon-Philippe Poirier implies an existing and publicized relationship between him and Gaignat, inviting us to speculate that he may have supplied the latter with the present vases. That Poirier was not alone in supplying the Court with these distinctive vases, however, is confirmed in the Livre-Journal of the marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux. On 10 December 1754, he supplied Madame de Pompadour with Deux autres vases d'ancienne porcelaine verte reliefs bleu, mont en bronze doré d'or moulu, 1,700 l.. The high price and infrequent reference to this distinctive type of porcelain suggests that it was both highly prized and admired in the eighteenth century.
A single pot-pourri vase, its porcelain closely related to the present but more densely decorated, and its mounts in a slightly more fully developed Louis XV style, is in the collection of His Majesty the King at Buckingham Palace (RCIN 2306, published in J. Harris, G. de Bellaigue, O. Millar, Buckingham Palace and its Treasures, New York, 1968, p. 188). Unlike the present pair, however, the Buckingham Palace example is mounted with a pierced collar between its body and the cover, a feature which is not described in the Gaignat catalogue description or illustration. In addition, a pair of pot-pourri vases with closely related decoration to the porcelain, but also with later, more fully Louis XV-style mounts and a flat lid, are preserved in the Wrightsman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (F.J.B. Watson, The Wrightsman Collection, New York, 1966, vol. II cat. no. 248 A-B).