This serpentined oval cup of silver-gilt and verde antico marble, transformed into a richly-mounted ewer, in the Franco-Chinois Picturesque manner, largely derives from the banqueting 'nef', designed about 1725 for Louis XV by the goldsmith Juste Aurèle Meissonnier (d. 1750), who was the King's 'Dessinateur de la Chambre et du Cabinet' (illustrated in his Oevres, c. 1750). Like the rocaille composition, incorporating a fire-breathing salamander with steaming cassolette, illustrated in Jacques de Lajoue's, Tableaux d'ornaments et rocailles, c. 1740, pl. 4, the ewer's dragon-entwined handle, also relates to that of a fanciful ewer invented by Lajoue, who was 'Peintre' to Louis XV, and engraved in his Livre de Vases, c. 1740. The latter was accompanied by a water-god, and here the god's mask is suspended beneath the ewer's lip. Its rim, of festive ribbon-bound reeds lapped by watery embossments, incorporates Venus' scallop-shell badge; and this is supported by flower-festooned and acanthus-scrolled cartouches; while acanthus-husks festoon its voluted stem. In the later 19th century, copies were made of the 'dragon' candelabra, which Meissonnier designed for Louis XV, and it is likely that this magnificent ewer was manufactured at this period (see H. Ottomeyer, Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, nos. 6.2.7. & 8.).
The signature may be that of Henri Nelson listed at rue Pasquier, Paris from the 1870s, who also manufactured bronze-mounted furniture in the 18th century manner.