A pair of Chinese porcelain jardinières with English gilt-bronze mounts by Benjamin Vulliamy. Circular, with rounded sides and flat, spreading rim, and painted in famille rose enamels.

In the main panels are ladies in a fenced garden, and a man in a pavilion playing the qin and a boy looking out of a window; in the cartouches on the neck are flower sprays; the blue glaze is overpainted with gilt lozenge and cloud diaper patterns. Attached to the shoulder on either side is a pair of gilt-bronze winged dragon masks supporting upright geometric ‘Chinese bracket’ handles, fixed to the rim with flower-shaped studs. The vessel sits in a circular gilt-bronze ring, with a fluted and acanthus-leaf band attached to a large square plinth with two entwined dragons in low relief in each corner, with chevron-patterned sides and two scrolled ends, standing on a foot at each corner, framed by pierced ‘Chinese brackets’ with overlapping grooved discs above eight claws, on sunken metal castors. See also RCIN 48.

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