A pair of tapering oval porcelain vases with undulating slightly flared lip; moulded body and spreading foot; front and back painted with views of German castles, within border of gilt scrolls; sides painted on pink ground with polychrome flowers. The foot decorated with gilt scrolls.
Prince Albert spent some of his early years in Coburg in the Thuringia region of Germany. The region's infrastructure provided all the raw materials for making porcelain and, following the example of the Meissen factory near Dresden, several manufactories were set up in the area in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, each attempting to produce as white a body as possible. By comparison with other contemporary factories, Thuringian porcelain included very little limestone or potassium in its composition but compensated with a very high level of silica (72 per cent of the body as opposed to only about 60 per cent at Meissen). This resulted in an extremely vitreous porcelain.

Unlike many contemporary factories, the Gotha works were not owned by the ducal family, except for a brief period under Prince Albert's grandfather, Prince Augustus of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1772-1822), at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The factory passed into the hands of the Henneberg family in 1813. The company was renowned for its landscape painting and won a prize at the Great Exhibition in 1851 for a small work-table painted with local views. These vases are illustrated with views of the Ehrenburg Palace and the mountaintop Veste or fortress in Coburg.

Text from Victoria & Albert: Art & Love.