A NEAR PAIR OF GEORGE III ORMOLU AND BLUE JOHN 'GOAT'S HEAD' CANDLE VASES

The 'goat's head vase' is derived from a sketch illustrated in Boulton and Fothergill's pattern books preserved in the Birmingham City Archives (Pattern Book 1, p. 171). The design was one of the most popular of Boulton’s smaller candle vases and was produced from 1769, with the first recorded sale to a Mrs Yeats who ordered '1 pair of goat's head vauses light blue cheny or enamelled'. In the same year, Sir William Guise ordered a pair with blue john bodies 'of the purpel stone no medals on' (N. Goodison, Matthew Boulton: Ormolu, London, 2002, p. 331). Other buyers of goat's head vases include Lord Digby in 1774 and Lord Scarsdale in 1772, who paid £4 4s a pair. The model was produced until certainly 1782, when at least 17 were listed amongst the stock. Whilst the metalwork was almost always ormolu, the bodies varied and included blue and green enamel, alabaster, leopard and tiger stone and, as in this pair, blue john. Sir Nicholas noted that the sketch in the pattern books shows a vase without medallions, but that vases with medallions were clearly a common feature of the early production of this model, as Sir William Guise's 1769 order specifically requests for them to be omitted. A pair of vases in the Royal Collection (RCN 6828; ibid., p. 332, pl. 331) display the medallions of Alexander the Great that were frequently included in candle vases of this model, an image that was possibly derived by Boulton from a seal impression produced by James Tassie after a classical source (ibid., pp. 106, 330). That one of the present candle vases has small holes to the neck implies that originally it was probably further ornamented with medallions.
Closely related pairs of vases with blue john bodies were sold from the estate of Guy Fairfax Cary, Christie's, New York, 18 October 2005, lot 554, ($54,000 including premium), another from the collection of Benjamin Edwards III, Christie's, New York, 21-22 October 2010, lot 144 ($25,000 including premium), another from the estate of the late Robert Moss Harris, Christie's, London, 23 May 2012, lot 304 (£51,650 including premium); and another by Apter-Fredericks, Christie's, London, 19 January 2021, lot 61 (£40,000 inc. premium).