ATTRIBUTED TO MATTHEW BOULTON, LATE 18TH CENTURY

These ormolu-mounted statuary marble perfume-burners, comprising plinth bases with egg-shaped bodies on ogee-sided altar-pedestals, were manufactured by Messrs. Matthew Boulton and John Fothergill of Soho, Birmingham circa 1772. With its voluted handles terminating in bacchic ram-masks that are festooned with laurel and hung with ribbon-tied swags, the vases correspond to a design for one in blue john illustrated in their Pattern Book I, p. 171 (illustrated in N. Goodison, Ormolu The Work of Matthew Boulton, London, 1974, pl. 163, fig. m; and N. Goodison, Matthew Boulton: Ormolu, London, 2002, p. 305, pl. 278). A pair of perfume-burners of this pattern and very closely related to the present pair of perfume-burners, with statuary marble pedestals and bluejohn vases, is illustrated in Goodison, op. cit., 1974, pl. 141 and op. cit., 2002, pl. 279. Amongst related vases with this handle pattern are a pair in blue john almost certainly commissioned by Sir Edward Knatchbull (d.1779) for Mersham-Le-Hatch, Kent, sold by Lord Brabourne at Christie's London, 19 November 1992. An almost identical pair with white marble socles was sold Christie's, London, 2 May 2013, lot 9.