Prince Albert was fascinated by the electrotyping process and this vase is an electrotype reduction of the second-century marble Townley Vase found by Gavin Hamilton (1723-98) at the villa of Antoninus Pius at Monte Cagnolo. Named after the collector Charles Townley (1737-1805), who acquired it from Hamilton in 1774, it entered the British Museum at the beginning of the nineteenth century. A version of the vase appeared on Elkington's stand at the Great Exhibition. It was also reproduced in Parian by Copeland & Garrett.

The piece was produced in the fashionable oxidised silver (silver treated with a metal sulphide dip to give it a blue-black or dark grey appearance). This technique was imported from France and was considered the best method for showing off the chased details of a piece of plate. According to the Illustrated London News, the process, ‘by producing a warm tone, and reducing the glitter of the metal, gives that display to light and shade, which only can develop the delicacies of such workmanship and design’.

In November 1843 Prince Albert made his first visit to Birmingham, despite the fears of his advisers that the city was in the hands of the Chartists. As he wrote to Baron Stockmar on 17 December, ‘I went … to Birmingham to see its manufactures. Sir James Graham and others had advised me strongly not to go … Nevertheless, I was received with indescribable enthusiasm’. His interest in the process continued from that date, resulting in several purchases and commissions.

Text from Victoria & Albert: Art & Love.