BY MATTHEW BOULTON

Details

A PAIR OF GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED WHITE MARBLE URNS
By Matthew Boulton
Each with removable lid of double-gadrooned domed form with foliate finial, the tapering ring-turned neck swagged with laurel and above an entrelac-and-rosette collar on a pounced and pearled ground, the tapering ovoid body with upspringing acanthus cup issuing husk-trailed scrolled arms, on a spreading circular socle with gadrooned moulding and stepped square base, minor variations in size
One: 9¾ in. (24 cm.) high
The other: 9¼ in. (23.5 cm.) high (2)

Provenance

Bought from Norman Adams, 21 June 1963.

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

The Boulton garniture displays 'Apollo' laurels festooning the white marble krater-vases, which are wreathed by a pearled and flowered ribbon-guilloche and stand on Grecian double-stepped plinths. The laurels festoon from the handles' flowered and acanthus-wrapped volutes, that are reed-tied to the vases's hollowed necks , while triumphal palm-buds rise from the domes of their reeded lids. This lid pattern, introduced around 1770, features on Boulton's vases that have been associated with 'Cleopatra' (Goodison, 1974, fig. 111). While not illustrated in Boulton's Pattern Books, their flowered ribbon features on his vase numbered 349 in Pattern Book 1, p. 170.(Goodison, 2002, fig. 25.

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