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1 of 253523 objects
Pair of cycad palm vases with mounts late 16th-early 17th century, mounts: 18th century
Porcelain with brown glaze and underglaze blue with gilt bronze | 33.6 x 15.5 x 13 cm (whole object) | RCIN 500
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A pair of Japanese porcelain vases with eighteenth-century French gilt-bronze mounts, in the form of trunks of cycad palm, their scaly bark moulded and brown-glazed, with two side-shoots, their tips and the splayed top rim plain-glazed and painted with leaves in blue. The rounded base is set in a leafy gilt-bronze cup, supported on a branch tip with a four-leaf spray with two imbricated berries.
It has been suggested that these vases may be from Hirado, not Arita, by virtue of their colouration and form. Louis Lawrence notes a pair of almost-identical unmounted vases in the collection at Hirado Castle which likewise exhibit an 'eccentricity of concept that is typically Hirado' (L. Lawrence, Hirado: Prince of Porcelains, 1997).
Text adapted from Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen: Volume II.Provenance
Purchased by George IV in 1814.
On 16 May 1814, Benois in Paris submitted an invoice for ‘5 vazes Japon deux palmiers - 2 fond Brûn 1 Violet’, at 390 francs (Royal Archives GEO/MAIN/26407).
Inventoried at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, in the Small Lobby Chamber Floor South, as ‘A pair of brown ground China Jars tree trunk shape with blue and white leaf tops, mounted with very fine ormolu cup flowers, leaf stems, & fruit bases, thirteen inches [33.0 cm]’ (1829B, p. 66); sent to Buckingham Palace in March 1847 (1829A, p. 32), and noted there in March 1914 in Room No. 238, Principal Floor (Brighton Pavilion Inventory of Clocks and China 1828, p. 98).
Exhibited in Porcelain for Palaces: The Fashion for Japan in Europe 1650–1750, British Museum, London, 1990. -
Creator(s)
(metalworker)(nationality)Acquirer(s)
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Medium and techniques
Porcelain with brown glaze and underglaze blue with gilt bronze
Measurements
33.6 x 15.5 x 13 cm (whole object)
Category
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