A PAIR OF GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED BLUEJOHN 'CANDLE VASES'

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THE BOULTON CONNECTION: A TRIBUTE We first met when I was a young stockbroker and had developed a business specialising in research into property companies. Then, when I was writing the first edition of my book on Boulton's ormolu ornaments, I visited his house in London in order to look at the pieces by Boulton and Fothergill in his remarkable collection. I always made a practice, if an ornament was a new one to me, of taking it to pieces in order to record the method of construction and the distinctive features of Boulton and Fothergill's manufacture, and to check the gilding and the authenticity of the components. So I took some of the vases to pieces, which worried both him and his wife until I had them safely reassembled. I think I would have been worried myself in their place by this inquisitive young scholar-stockbroker with a special toolkit. But they were both charming and tolerant - and interested - and I was rewarded with warm hospitality, agreeable conversation and a fascinating tour of the house and his collections. I last saw them both at the party at Christie's to launch the new and much revised edition of my book, Matthew Boulton: Ormolu. I was delighted that they came. They had both been so helpful during my researches for the first edition over thirty years ago. Despite my infrequent contacts, I shall always remember him as a kind man with impeccable manners, a man of keen curiosity and impish enthusiasm, a man of taste, a man who derived real joy from looking at beautiful things, a man who happily shared his enthusiasms with the young, as he did with me. Nicholas Goodison March 2003 Sir Nicholas Goodison, F.S.A., is author of the definitive Matthew Boulton: Ormolu, published by Christie's Books, London, 2002, hereafter referred to as Goodison, 2002. It supersedes his earlier Ormolu: The Work of Matthew Boulton, London, 1974, hereafter referred to as Goodison, 1974. MATTHEW BOULTON'S 'ROMAN' VASES Matthew Boulton's 'Roman' vases of beautiful blue-john from Castleton, Derbyshire, or of statuary marble, ormolu-enriched in the French manner, provided decorative chimney-piece and table garnitures for rooms decorated in the George III 'antique' fashion. They were particularly suited to the Etruscan 'columbarium' style promoted by The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam, London, 1773. Presented on stepped or 'altar' plinths, they often served as candlesticks, with reversible socket-concealing lids, or were aggrandised with candelabra branches. Their ornament generally served to evoke lyric poetry, and the history of Roman deities recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses, or Loves of the Gods. Matthew Boulton (d.1802) established his Soho manufactory and began his celebrated partnership with John Fothergill (d.1782) in 1762. Following the establishment of their ormolu manufactures in the late 1760s, they were patronised by George III and Queen Charlotte, whill Christie & Ansell's Pall Mall Rooms provided them with access to London's fashionable clientele, and auctions were held there in 1770, April 1771 and 1778 of 'the produce of Messrs Boulton & Fothergill's manufactures at Soho in Staffordshire, comprehending A variety of superb vases,clocks, candelabrums, exquisitely modelled & elegantly designed'. Indeed, Empress Catherine of Russia is reported to have considered their wares in 1772 to be 'Superior in every respect to the French'.

A PAIR OF GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED BLUEJOHN 'CANDLE VASES'

BY MATTHEW BOULTON

Details

A PAIR OF GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED BLUEJOHN 'CANDLE VASES'
By Matthew Boulton
Each with removable top with pine-cone finial above a spreading domed acanthus base with waisted and pearled neck and spreading acanthus reversing to form a candle-nozzle to the other side with removable stiff-leaf cast drip-pan, baluster-form stiff-leaf nozzle with pinched and foliate-cast socle and spreading part-fluted plinth, the ovoid body with reeded rim flanked by scrolled handles with rosettes and husk trails, terminating in acanthus sprays, the ovoid body held by an acanthus cup and above an acanthus-headed part-pearled fluted spreading circular socle with laurel collar and square base
12½ in. (32 cm.) high; 5¼ in. (13.5 cm.) wide (2)

Provenance

Bought from Norman Adams, circa 1976.

Literature

C. Claxton Stevens and S. Whittington, 18th Century English Furniture, The Norman Adams Collection, Woodbridge, rev. ed., 1985, pp. 475-6
N. Goodison, Matthew Boulton: Ormolu, London, 2002, p. 309, figs. 288-289.

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

Apollo's poetic laurels and Venus-pearls wreath the antique fluted stems of these bacchic wine-krater vases, whose richly striated blue-john bodies are formed as 1Leda' swan-eggs. They serve to recall the history of Leda, whose seduction by Jupiter in the guise of a swan led to the birth of the twins Castor and Pollux and the creation of the Gemini zodiacal sign.
Their Grecian-scrolled arms of Roman acanthus possibly derive, in reverse, from a 16th century Florentine urn pattern in R. Sayer's New Book of Vases and Urns by Della Bella, issued in The Ladies Amusement 1760 (T. Clifford, Designs of Desire, 2000, no. 46).

Boulton's original design, numbered 863, features in Boulton's pattern Book 1, p. 170 (Goodison, 2002, fig. 290), whilst their domed and palm-wreathed lids, tipped by thyrsus-cone finials, conceal palm-wreathed candle-vases. The latter derive from the 'Apollo' candlestick pattern in Boulton's Book 1, p. 19 (Goodison, 2002, fig. 132.1).

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