.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This vase and cover appears to be the pair to the vase from Mentmore Towers, Buckinghamshire (sold Sotheby's House sale, 24th May 1977, lot 2006). Much of the French porcelain at Mentmore was collected by Baron Mayer Amschel de Rothschild and left to his only child, Hannah de Rothschild, later the Countess of Rosebery, following her marriage to the 5th Earl of Rosebery, who augmented the collection. A similar smaller vase from the collection of either Sir Charles Mills or his son, the 1st Lord Hillingdon, was published by Adrian Sassoon, Bleu Céleste from A to ff, Catalogue, 2003, no. 7.
A similar bleu lapis ground vase in the Royal Collection is illustrated in Tamara Préaud and Antoine d'Albis, La Porcelaine de Vincennes, Paris, 1991, pp. 124-5, no. 50. Linda A. Roth and Claire Le Corbellier in French Eighteenth-Century Porcelain at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Wadsworth, 2000, pp. 111-113 also illustrate a pair of vases decorated by Taillandier, where the author discusses the model and sales by the marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux of four vases cannelés, bleu céleste for 144 livres to Monsieur de Courgy in 1755, and two vases cannelés, bleu céleste à fleurs to the prince de Soubise in 1758 for 864 livres (perhaps the present vase and the Mentmore example).
This form was designed by Duplessis in 1754 and is referred to in factory records as vase cannelé (fluted vase) though Svend Eriksen and Geoffrey de Bellaigue suggest the more light-hearted vase à corset (bodice vase) based on an entry from the Gaignat sale catalogue of 1768 (Eriksen & Bellaigue, Sèvres Porcelain, London, 1987, pp. 289-9). Later inventories have referred to the form as vase gobelet à côtes, such as the footed example from the Sèvres Musée National de Céramique, illustrated by Marcelle Brunet and Tamara Prèaud, Sèvres, Des origines à nos jours, Fribourg, 1978, p. 150, no. 80.
A similar bleu lapis ground vase in the Royal Collection is illustrated in Tamara Préaud and Antoine d'Albis, La Porcelaine de Vincennes, Paris, 1991, pp. 124-5, no. 50. Linda A. Roth and Claire Le Corbellier in French Eighteenth-Century Porcelain at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Wadsworth, 2000, pp. 111-113 also illustrate a pair of vases decorated by Taillandier, where the author discusses the model and sales by the marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux of four vases cannelés, bleu céleste for 144 livres to Monsieur de Courgy in 1755, and two vases cannelés, bleu céleste à fleurs to the prince de Soubise in 1758 for 864 livres (perhaps the present vase and the Mentmore example).
This form was designed by Duplessis in 1754 and is referred to in factory records as vase cannelé (fluted vase) though Svend Eriksen and Geoffrey de Bellaigue suggest the more light-hearted vase à corset (bodice vase) based on an entry from the Gaignat sale catalogue of 1768 (Eriksen & Bellaigue, Sèvres Porcelain, London, 1987, pp. 289-9). Later inventories have referred to the form as vase gobelet à côtes, such as the footed example from the Sèvres Musée National de Céramique, illustrated by Marcelle Brunet and Tamara Prèaud, Sèvres, Des origines à nos jours, Fribourg, 1978, p. 150, no. 80.