These elegant neo-classical vases were probably made between 1765 and 1770. It is hard to be precise as to when this model was first produced at the Sèvres factory as no dated examples are known. The first reference to a vase bouteille en écharpes appears in the factory's glaze records of 1767 to 1769 but the model must have been produced earlier as the four examples at Goodwood House are likely to have been purchased from Bachelier in 1765-66, at a probably price of 156 or 192 livres each, during the Duke and Duchess of Richmond's visit to Paris. The Sèvres factory records state that eight vases bouteille en écharpes were glazed between 1767 and 1769.

Very few other examples of this type of vase in soft-paste porcelain are known. The Goodwood examples mentioned above are not mounted and are all blue ground. One pair was recently exhibited, Chefs d'oeuvre de Goodwood, Foundation Mona Bismarck, Paris, 7 February-21 March 1992, Catalogue No. 100, illustrated, p.90. There is a single vase with very similar mounts to the present lot and another pair with different mounts in the Wallace Collection, London. These are discussed by R. Savill in The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Sèvres Porcelain, London, 1988, vol. I, pp.270-276. In all three cases the bleu nouveau ground is decorated with oeil de perdrix gilding. A further example with green ground decoration was sold Drouot, Paris, 28 October 1983, lot 80.

It is interesting to note that this model was copied by the Derby factory in the 18th Century with the same lion-mask mounts but in porcelain and also copied at Coalport in the 19th Century, thereby confirming the authenticity of the mounts