THE MOUNTS PROBABLY ENGLISH, CIRCA 1830, THE PORCELAIN 18TH/19TH CENTURY

The fashion for mounting expensive exotic porcelain with gilt-bronze reached its zenith under the Ancien Régime, in particular during the reign of Louis XV, with specialist dealers (marchands-merciers) such as Lazare Duvaux and Simon-Philippe Poirier commissioning naturalistic and innovative creations from bronziers including Duplessis and Jacques Caffiéri to cater for their clients' fascination with the East and desire for the rarest and costliest wares from China and Japan to be mounted in glittering gilt-bronze. This fascination with the East, or rather more specifically with the beautiful objects produced as a result of it, was wholeheartedly embraced by the English aristocracy later in the 18th Century and into the 19th Century, who benefitted from the increase in supply of such objects on the market following the French Revolution, in particular the Prince Regent. For the furnishing of Carlton House and later the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, he acquired numerous Chinese celadon vases and bowls with French mounts, many of which were overdecorated with white slip (see RCIN 2379 and 2318). In some cases, as with the Weinstock vases, new mounts were commissioned where needed, from English craftsmen including Vulliamy, as well as from the Hanway Street dealer in furniture and porcelain, Edward Holmes Baldock (1777–1845), who was possibly responsible for the mounts of the present vases.
Baldock, 'Purveyor of China, Earthenware and Glass to William IV' (1832-7) and 'Purveyor of China to Queen Victoria' (1838-45), was both a retailer of 'antique' French furniture - particularly late 17th-century Boulle and Louis XV floral marquetry - as well as a manufacturer of furniture and objets de luxe in the French taste and in the manner of 18th-century marchands-merciers. Established in Hanway Street, London, he often employed the brand 'E.H.B.' and was responsible for the formation of many of the greatest early 19th Century collections of French furniture in England, including those of George IV, the Dukes of Buccleuch and Northumberland, William Beckford and George Byng, MP.