Object Description
Pair of Elegant Ormolu-Mounted Sèvres-Style Porcelain Amphora Vases Style of Sèvres (French, founded 1738)
Signed Lucot
Height: 134cm, width: 45cm, depth: 30cm
This graceful pair of Sèvres-style porcelain and ormolu-mounted vases and covers, dating from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, exemplifies the grandeur and elegance characteristic of French decorative arts of the era. Each vase features a pseudo-Sèvres interlaced L mark on the cover, and the painted decoration is signed “Lucot,” demonstrating the technical accomplishment and artistic refinement of the porcelain painting.
Each vase is of baluster form with a long, tapering body, set on a porcelain socle and a square ormolu base with four paw feet, and topped by a domed cover with a finely cast pineapple finial. The cover and waisted neck are finished in a deep cobalt blue ground, enriched with finely tooled gilt laurel banding and scrolling gilt ornament, lending the upper section a stately architectural presence that frames the painted body below.
The broad bodies carry continuous painted scenes on each face. The principal view depicts French aristocrats at leisure in a garden setting — elegantly costumed figures conversing beneath a flowering trellis, accompanied by doves and cascading blossoms — rendered with the luminosity and narrative clarity characteristic of high-quality nineteenth-century porcelain painting. The reverse of each vase presents a tranquil view of a French château seen across still water or through an autumnal landscape, with swans gliding on a luminous lake or gardens extending toward a stone balustrade, executed with a loose and confident technique that evokes the landscape tradition of the period.
The ormolu mounts are distinguished by their quality and inventive design. The elaborate twin handles extend from the shoulder in scrolling acanthus branches, each surmounted by a finely cast nymph head crowned with flowers, terminating at the lower body in further leafy ornament. Additional gilt-bronze mounts enrich the rim, the junction of neck and body, the lower body, and the circular socle, while the square plinth base rests on four boldly cast paw feet with foliate surrounds.
Stately in scale and ravishing in decorative effect, this pair represents the French Sèvres revival tradition at its most accomplished, uniting the refined vocabulary of eighteenth-century court porcelain with the ambition and technical mastery of the leading late nineteenth-century decorative arts ateliers.