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Lot Essay
Both Hope and Boulton were known to each other through membership of the Royal Society. Both aimed to improve the arts through quality of manufacture, Boulton at his Soho manufactory and Hope through both the printed medium of his designs in Household Furniture and by opening his house to like-minded patrons and connoisseurs. Indeed Boulton sent one of his gifted craftsmen, John Phillp (1780-1820), to Duchess Street to make drawings of the furniture and decorations. Hope wrote to Boulton on 14 September 1805: 'I think myself highly honoured indeed, my dear Sir, by the greatest compliment you pay my taste, in thinking that the forms and ornaments I have adopted in the arrangement and finishing of my little collection of art can in any degree add to the merit of the interesting and useful productions that issue from your extensive and magnificent establishment' (quoted in D. Watkin, Thomas Hope and the Neo-Classical Idea, London, 1968, p. 54).
None of the present pattern of vases, except for one pair, are known to have caps and no drawing for them survives. The constructional features and use of decorative elements such as the guilloche band are found on many other pieces that emanated from Boulton's Soho manufactory (N. Goodison, Matthew Boulton: Ormolu, London, 2002, p. 300 and fig. 267).
None of the present pattern of vases, except for one pair, are known to have caps and no drawing for them survives. The constructional features and use of decorative elements such as the guilloche band are found on many other pieces that emanated from Boulton's Soho manufactory (N. Goodison, Matthew Boulton: Ormolu, London, 2002, p. 300 and fig. 267).