ATTRIBUTED TO MATTHEW BOULTON, CIRCA 1775

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 bluejohn 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, lot 4 (and again, anonymously, 6 July 1995, lot 10);a large-scale single vase of this model, lacking handles, was sold from the collections at Mount Congreve, Ireland, at Christie's London, 23 May 2012, lot 23; a closely related pair was sold Christie's London, 19 November 1981, lot 8; and a closely related pair in white marble, with ormolu socles and surmounted by twin-branch candelabra was previously with Maurice 'Dick' Turpin (ibid., p. 306, pl. 280).