Page 115 - Mounted Oriental Porcelain, The Getty Museum

2,1. STANDING VASE

THE PORCELAIN: Chinese (Qianlong), mid-eighteenth century
THE GILT-BRONZE MOUNTS: French (Paris), circa 1785, attributed to Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751-1843)
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HEIGHT: 2 ft., 7 /4 in. (81 cm); DIAMETER: i ft., io A in. (56.5 cm)
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DESCRIPTION COMMENTARY
The large oviform porcelain vase is covered with a The vase was probably originally intended to hold
powder blue glaze on the exterior; on the interior the koi. The type of glaze on the outside of the vase became
blue glaze is irregularly spattered. It is mounted on four known as "bleu souffle." A powdered pigment was
tall splayed legs of gilt bronze terminating in goats' blown through a bamboo tube, covered at the end with
hooves. Below the rim of the vase there are four gilt- a piece of fine gauze, while the unfired clay was still
bronze satyrs' heads. The heads are linked by swags of moist. This operation was repeated several times so as
vine leaves, with tendrils and bunches of grapes. to produce a deep, unified color.
Above each leg, the vase is clasped by vertical bands The interior of the vase is also covered with a glaze
of gilt bronze. These bands are fluted and have rope that was applied by blowing. It shows a mottled blue-
moldings along their inner edges. The satyrs are crowned and-white, and was known as "solan," or sprinkled blue.
with vine leaves above which elaborately curling goats' Both glazes were first achieved in the Ming dynasty,
horns spring to rest on the gilt-bronze rim of the vase during the Xuande reign (1426-35). These classic col-
(figs. 2iA and ZIB). This rim is mounted with alternat- ors were revived in the Kangxi manufactories.
ing gadroons and wheat ears above a rope molding. Two other mounted vases of the same design are
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The vase is surrounded by an open-work band of known. One of these is in the British Royal Collection ;
oak leaves and acorns, beneath which a large grape the other was sold in Paris in I97O. 2 There was prob-
cluster depends from a cup of gadrooned gilt bronze ably a fourth, making either a set or two pairs. The
(fig. 2ic). Above the hoofed feet, the legs evolve into mounts on these vases have been attributed from time to
elongated acanthus leaves. time both to Pierre Gouthiere (1732-1813/14) and to
The hooves rest on projections from the deep red Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751-1843). The style of the
griotte marble plinth. This is inset around the sides with mounts conforms to the early work of the latter bronzier.
rectangular panels of milled gilt bronze. The top of the The swags of vine leaves and grapes closely resemble
base is inset at the center with a corolla of gilt-bronze those found decorating the sides of a porphyry urn on a
leaves surrounded by an inset milled band and framed stand, attributed to Thomire, in the Wrightsman Collec-
at each side by a bead molding. tion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 3
The marble base rests on four short bulbous gilt- Other mounts on that elaborate piece can be compared
bronze feet. with documented works by Thomire. The band of oak
leaves and acorns around the base of the column is sim-
MARKS ilar in design to that found on two mounted Sevres vases
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The undersurface of the porcelain vase is faintly made by Thomire in 1783 and I784. Each of these vases
inscribed in black ink "i78(?)." is set in a cup of leaves of comparable form to those
found at the base of the Wrightsman porphyry urn. The
ribbed and flattened horns, there springing from goats'
heads, may also be compared with the curling horns on

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