This most unusual pair of vases is decorated with a French patriotic Royalist design, which recalls the overthrow of the monarchy in 1793 and reproduces a print published that year in France entitled 'L'Urne Mysterieuse'. The print is in standard 18th Century memorial taste, with a weeping willow sweeping across a funerary urn. However, the artist has cleverly concealed two human profiles flanking the stepped foot, visible only by the small vertical projections at each side which in fact represent the mouths of the figures. It is suggested that the profiles, possibly taken from a medal, represent King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. A number of similar examples of these Royalist objects in Chinese porcelain have been published. A dish, with the original French print, is reproduced by J.G. Phillips, op. cit., pp.188-189; another is in J.M. Beurdeley, op. cit., p.87, pl.XIV; and D.S. Howard and J. Ayers, op. cit., no.242, reproduce a similar charger which has addditional detail in the foliage of the weeping willow where three further profiles are concealed, possibily representing the Dauphin, his sister Marie Therese, and Elizabeth, sister of Louis XIV, who was executed in 1794. See also the plate in the Reeves Collection, Washington and Lee University, Cat.138; and the single urn and cover in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Bordeaux, illustrated by F. et N. Hervouet, op. cit., no.9.97, beside a dish of similar type from the collection of L. Luneau, Nantes. The Bordeaux urn actually forms one of a pair in the Museum, formerly in the Lataillade Collection, illustrated by M. Beurdeley and G.Raindre, op. cit., pl.280. It is suggested by D. Howard that, because of the variations found in at least five designs of this engraving ordered specially by emigrés in England, it is possible that some were ordered by London China merchants for French clients; he illustrates one of this type with the initials SDM, from the Hodroff Collection, illustrated, The Choice of the Private Trader, no.98.

A bombé tureen, cover and stand with the design including the extra three profiles was sold in these Rooms, 1 March 1976, lot 138; and other examples, 14 March 1977, lots 77 and 77A