Very rare Sèvres solid blue hard-paste vase with gilt edges, 1782

Vase Cygne Uni

On its original square gilt bronze base with rope-twist border.

Total height 27.0 cm, ø 22.0 cm. Socle 12.5 x 12.5 cm, height 2.8 cm

Gilt interlaced Ls, date-letter ee for 1782.

This vase is made of an extremely rare solid blue porcelain paste produced at Sèvres from the 1780's to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The blue pigment was mixed with the hard-paste body in the manner of Josiah Wedgwood's jasperware, and covered with a clear glaze.

Blue paste is mentioned in the modellers records as early as 1780. In that year it was used to make examples the following shapes: vase pongon, vase Chine, vase buire Boizot and vase cygne.

The only references in the sales registers to blue or gray paste as it is occasionally called are purchases by members of the french royal family.

This shape of vase was first produced around 1775 copying an engraving in a volume of designs to be turned in ivory, by Pierre-Elisabeth de Fontanieu, the intendant of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne. The engraving shows a vase with a high relief Bacchic mask surrounded by grapes, and the upper part of the body is fluted. The vase was first produced at Sèvres with a relief of swans in the manner of the Meissen Swan Service. This example is the only known one of the simplified version with no raised decoration.

The socle has no apparent incised mark. The foot rim has probably been ground down.

Restored chip to the vase top rim. The base with breaks at the top, all around, the square foot with two chips and slight gilding wear.

(19107)

€8,600