Pair of bottle vases

A pair of Chinese porcelain vases with green glaze, painted in famille rose enamels and mounted in French and English gilt bronze. Each with tall, ovoid body, waisted, tubular neck and gently spreading rim, and four moulded dragons in applied relief round the shoulder. Painted all over in imitation of painted or cloisonné enamel work; in reserve, on a light apple-green ground, relieved with incised feathery scrollwork, are lotus and hibiscus scrolls, the inside of the neck and base treated with a light turquoise enamel. Two of the dragons are in iron-red and gold, and the others in yellow and rose-pink.

The top rim is fitted with a projecting, incised, gilt-bronze band, the domed cover cast with beaded edge and acanthus leaves, surmounted by a berried acanthus finial. The foot is set in a beaded ring above a bold egg-and-dart band, on a plain circular step and large, hollow, square base. Covering a thick dressing of brown wax on the turquoise base (probably part of a previous mounting) is a wooden plaque, from which a stabilising metal rod runs through the vase to connect with the rim band, no doubt for its former use as a lamp.

The mounts are of a design unfamiliar in the wider repertoire of gilt-bronze mounted porcelain. Some are likely to be English in origin, perhaps added to French late eighteenth-century gilt-bronze mounts at the suggestion of a London porcelain dealer such as Fogg, Owen or Sharpus, in the early nineteenth century. This must remain speculation, as no invoice linked with the acquisition of these vases has been traced.

Text adapted from Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen: Volume I.