BY MATTHEW BOULTON, CIRCA 1770

Details

A PAIR OF GEORGE III ORMOLU-MOUNTED BLUE-JOHN CANDLE VASES
BY MATTHEW BOULTON, CIRCA 1770
Each gadrooned lid above a similarly gadrooned waisted neck and ovoid body hung with laurel swags suspended from flowerheads and with acanthus leaf-wrapped bases, on a spiral-fluted socle and square foot with Greek-key edge, the cylindrical base applied with lion masks draped with laurel swags over a stepped plinth with guilloche edges, minor variations in the height of the blue-john urn-sections and in the casting of the stiff-leaf collars around the bases of the plinths, one vase with replaced thread and one acanthus-leaf to base of body replaced
10½ in. (27 cm.) and 11 in. (28 cm.) high respectively (2)

Provenance

With Frank Partridge, London, 1972.
With William Redford, London, 1974.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 21 November 1981, lot 149.

Literature

'Supplement - other exhibitions', Apollo, June 1972, p. S10.
N. Goodison, Ormolu: The Work of Matthew Boulton, London, 1974, pl. 110.
W. Rieder, 'Living with Antiques', The Magazine Antiques, June 1987, p. 1322, pl. IX.
N. Goodison, 'Ormolu Ornaments by Matthew Boulton' in E. Lennox-Boyd, ed., Masterpieces of English Furniture, The Gerstenfeld Collection, London, 1996, p. 173, pl. 123, and cat. no. 122.
N. Goodison, Matthew Boulton: Ormolu, London, 2002, pl. 298, pl. 261.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium This lot is subject to Collection and Storage charges

Lot Essay

These vases comprise festive Grecian-stepped altar-pillars that are hung with bacchic lion-heads and capped by laurel-wreathed sacred urns evoking lyric poetry and sacrifices at love's altar.
Such vases, with candle-nozzles concealed in their lids, were designed by Matthew Boulton as appropriate embellishment for the furnishings of a room decorated either in the French goût grec fashion or in the Etruscan 'columbarium' fashion promoted by Robert Adam (d.1792).
This vase pattern was invented for altar-pedestals bearing 'Cleopatra' medallions after the manner of a James Tassie gem, and feature in the Boulton pattern-book. It was perhaps this 'Cleopatra' pattern that Boulton was considering offering in 1770 to Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales (Goodison, op. cit., 1974, fig. 161, design r and p. 144; and Goodison op. cit., 2002, p 328.)
A closely related pair of the present model are now in the Royal Collection (Goodison, op. cit., 2002, pp. 114 and 116 and pl. 160).

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