LATE 19TH / EARLY 20TH CENTURY

The excavations at Pompeii, Herculaneum, Tivoli and Rome provided a wealth of source material which continued to inspire aesthetic tastes throughout the 19th century and into 20th century. Engravings published by Giovanni Battista Piranesi in his Vasi, Candelabri, Cippe etc of 1778 and subsequently designs by Percier and P. Fontaine's Recueil de Décorations Intérieures of 1801 reinvented and propagated Greco-Roman forms and motifs which were highly influential. Italy, with its vast deposits of marble and long sculptural tradition, exported quantities of garden sculpture, vases and ornaments to England in the 19th century and into the early 20th century. Numerous English firms, such as J. P. White whose published catalogue of 1906 illustrates a wide variety of garden ornaments, imported numbers of marble and terracotta pieces from from numerous Italian workshops. See John Davis Antique Garden Ornament, Antique Collectors Club, 1991, p.295-303.