This vase is of rounded shape; originally a gobelet Bouillard, which has been transformed subsequently into an ornamental vase by the addition of mounts and the removal of the porcelain handle.

Elaborate gilt bronze mounts have been fitted to the cup. A gilded, notched band runs round the outside rim of the cup. The single oval reserve is enclosed in a plain band, beaded on its outer side, which is tooled with wedge-shaped panels alternately burnished and matt; it is painted in polychrome with a bird in a landscape setting.

The porcelain rests in a gadrooned cup above a splayed, fluted stem (the flutes matt) which terminates at the top in a beaded collar and at the bottom in a laurel wreath with berries. The vase is supported on a square plinth, arched on its lower edges and with sunken granulated panels on all four sides. The cup is surmounted by a domed granulated cap overlain by pendent acanthus leaves; it rises to a spirally fluted and flared neck (the flutes matt) below a ribbed rim. The handles are in the form of harpies emerging from an acanthus sheaf and terminating at the bottom in a monster head.

This is another example of a conventional piece of tableware transformed into an ornamental vase in the early nineteenth century for the dealer Philippe-Claude Maëlrondt.

Text adapted from French Porcelain: In the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London, 2009