Sèvres pot-pourri vase in the shape of a ship

Pot-pourri Vase in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore - front
Back of the Walters Art Gallery vase. With later gilt-wood stand.

Pot pourri à vaisseau or pot pourri en navire ("pot-pourri holder as a vessel/ship") is a shape of a number of pot-pourri vases in the shape of masted ships, produced for a number of years from the late 1750s to the early 1760s by the Sèvres manufactory near Paris. The colours and details of the painted decoration vary between examples, as is typical of Sèvres porcelain, and some examples have been placed on later bases of ormolu. The openwork lid lifts off to allow refilling of the pot-pourri. The shape was eventually produced in two or three versions, at slightly different sizes. It was first designed in 1757, probably by Jean-Claude Duplessis (c. 1695-1774), the artistic director of the factory. The first surviving finished example dates to 1759.[1] Another name for them is vaisseau à mat (masted ship).

These vases are considered to be one of the most famous models introduced by the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres; patrons such as Madame de Pompadour and her brother the Marquis de Marigny collected the form. Among the largest vessels produced by the factory, these vases were extremely difficult to fire; the multiple openwork piercings in the body weakened the overall structure, and they tended to collapse in the kiln. Consequently, only about twelve were ever produced, ten of which survive today.[2]

The shape derives from the nef, a table decoration in the form of a ship, usually of precious metals, used since medieval times. The arms of the City of Paris also showed a ship, and the vases may reflect this. The vase would have held potpourri used to perfume a room. Eighteenth-century ladies made their own, experimenting with various ingredients and sometimes blending essences for as long as nine years. The vases were made to be sold with other vases of different shapes to form a garniture to place on a mantelpiece or side table. The main background colours in different examples range from pink to green and dark blue, and the subjects of the main painted spaces from naval subjects after Dutch painting to chinoiserie genre scenes.

Versions and copies

Sèvres still have some of the moulds, and a plaster model which incorporates features from both sizes. At Sèvres the shape evolved from a vase with no lid, the cuvette à masques, produced from 1754 (earliest example, at Houghton Hall), and the shape of the pot pourri à vaisseau was also used in an adaptation as a lidded tureen with a stand, the terrine gondole from at least 1757 (two in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna), and a different pot pourri gondole.[3]

The popularity of Sèvres porcelain with English collectors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is demonstrated by the presence of all ten known examples of this shape of vase being in English collections by the mid-nineteenth century. Today there is one in France, five in the UK and four in the US. The shape was copied, usually in somewhat simplified form, by some other manufacturers, notably the English firm Mintons, who were commissioned to make a replica by Georgina Ward, Countess of Dudley, when her husband sold his original in the 1880s; this is the example now in the Getty Museum.[4]

Surviving vases

Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

H: 15 5/16 in. (38.9 cm), 1764. Dark-blue main colour, with sailors packing fish in front main panel, and a maritime trophy on the rear. Provenance: Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1928, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.[5] The feet are later, in gilt-wood.[6]

Royal Collection, UK

"Soft-paste porcelain, bleu lapis and green ground overlaid with gilded œil-de-perdrix decoration, further gilding and gilt bronze", with interlaced LLs enclosing the date-letter F, c. 1758/9. Dimensions, excluding stand, 45.2 x 37.8 x 19.3 cm.[7]

Acquired by George IV, the vase in the Royal Collection is the largest of the three models of this shape produced at Sèvres, and is decorated with two ground colours, green and dark blue. The front reserve depicts a genre scene taken from an unknown source, inspired by David Teniers the Younger (1610–90). The ends of the vase are in the form of a bowsprit, projecting from the jaws of a marine head, and at the masthead is a fluttering white pennant, patterned with fleurs-de-lis. The vase was purchased in 1759 at the end-of-year sale at Versailles by Madame de Pompadour for 960 livres. Madame de Pompadour is known to have owned at three examples of this model (including those now in the Louvre and Royal Collection); these formed important components of her sumptuously appointed apartments.[8]

Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, England

Three examples: a 'masted ship' pot-pourri vase, c. 1760; a 'bleu celeste' vase, c. 1761; a light-blue ship vase, dated 1761.[9]

Wallace Collection, London

Acquired by Richard Seymour-Conway, the 4th Marquess of Hertford, by 1865, and possibly from the collection of Marie-Gabriel-Florens-Auguste, comte de Choiseul, known as Choiseul-Gouffier, this is the third of the ship-shaped vases designed by Jean-Claude Duplessis père (active 1748–74) in the 1750s. The naval theme is emphasised by the faceted bowsprits in the mouths of the marine masks and is a reminder that at this time the French navy was involved in the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). The Wallace Collection example dates from 1761, composed of soft-paste porcelain, is painted and gilded, and is 44.1 x 36.9 cm.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Main colour pink, painted with cherubs in the main panel. Designed by Jean-Claude Duplessis (active 1748–74) and dated about 1757–58, this is in soft-paste porcelain, with Sevres pink the main colour. With an overall dimension of 44.8 x 37.5 cm it was gifted by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in 1958, and is believed to be the vase in the ownership of Louis-Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Condé (where it formed a garniture with two of the famous elephant-head vases) and passed down after the French Revolution to Sir Charles Mills, Baronet and eventually to the Lords Hillingdon (in 1888). Notable marks include crossed Ls, and E. below, in blue on the underside with the factory mark and year letter.[10]

Frick Collection, New York

Green and blue colours, birds in trees in the main panel. Sévres Manufactory vaisseau à mat pot-pourri vase in the shape of a masted ship (one of a set of three), ca. 1759. Porcelain, soft paste. 17-1/2 in. x 14-7/8 in. x 7-1/2 in. Purchased by the Frick Collection in 1916.[11]

Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Genre scene on the front with flower garland on rear. Painting attributed to Charles-Nicolas Dodin, porcelain painter, about 1760. Soft paste porcelain, pink and green ground colors, polychrome enamel decoration and gilding. H: 1 ft. 2 3/4 in. x W: 1 ft. 1 11/16 in. x D: 6 13/16 in.[12]

Louvre, Paris

Jean-Claude Duplessis (circa 1695-1774), painted by Charles-Nicolas Dodin (1734-1803), c. 1760 in pink and green, with a chinoiserie scene in the main panel, after a painting by Francois Boucher. Once in the bedchamber of Madame de Pompadour at the Hôtel d'Évreux, which is today the Elysée Palace. Soft-paste porcelain, H. 37 cm; W. 35 cm.[13]

Notes

  1. ↑ Louvre; Metropolitan; Royal Collection; Frick; two sizes per Sassoon, 49, others say three
  2. ↑ Louvre; Metropolitan; Royal Collection
  3. ↑ Sassoon, 49
  4. ↑ Sassoon, 52, though Sotheby's gave a somewhat different history when they sold the Minton Museum's example in 2005,
  5. ↑ Walters
  6. ↑ Sassoon, 52
  7. ↑ Royal Collection
  8. ↑ Royal Collection; Metropolitan; Waddesdon Manor
  9. ↑ Waddesdon Manor
  10. ↑ Metropolitan
  11. ↑ Frick
  12. ↑ Sassoon, 49-56; Getty
  13. ↑ Louvre

References

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