This vase is elaborately decorated in tooled and burnished gold with foliage, scrolls, trellis and mosaic panels. Flowers in polychrome are painted in the reserves on the stand and floral trails on the vase section. These include roses, convolvulus, forget-me-nots and auricula. Of irregular oval shape, the flower vase is in two parts. The upper fan-shaped section, which has rounded ends flanked by projecting pilasters, splays out towards the bottom forming a ledge, which rests on the shoulders of the stand, within which the pierced foot of the vase section hangs free. The upper inclined shoulders of the stand are pierced with four cartouche-shaped openings alternating with panels decorated in gold with foliate trelliswork in two patterns. On the vase section trails of flowers are painted in the areas left white below an irregular green band at the top, richly gilt, and between and above alternating upright acanthus and lobed panels at the bottom, all in green, the lobed panels elaborately decorated in gold with swirling branches and asymmetrical trellis panels.

The Sèvres manufactory produced much floral painted decoration, botanical three-dimensional mounts and porcelain flower specimens in the mid-eighteenth century. Many shapes of vase were produced, including some such as the vase hollandois, which were particularly intended for the growing of bulbs. The term vase hollandois indicates that inspiration for their shape was taken from Dutch bulb-growing vases, produced in tin-glazed earthenware earlier in the century. A contemporary description of the vase hollandois shape records that it was intended ‘pour metre des fleurs en terre’. In winter, porcelain flowers could have been inserted through the holes in the top of the vase, or potpourri placed in the reservoir.

Text adapted from French Porcelain for English Palaces, Sèvres from the Royal Collection, London, 2009 and Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden, London, 2015.