Beschreibung:

A pair of George III ormolu mounted blue enamelled metal cassolettes By Matthew Boulton circa 1770 The covers with foliate clasped finials above knopped and stiff leaf casting, the upper collars of the ovoid bodies with guilloche bands, each with four flower heads supporting imbricated laurel leaf swags, on conforming foliate cast socles and square bases, each with further foliate and floral swags to each side, on four spherical feet; the covers inverting to reveal the candle sockets, 21cm high Comparative Literature: Goodison, Nicholas. Matthew Boulton London, 2002, figs. 248-49. Note: The vase-garniture candlesticks, evoking lyric poetry, were designed by Matthew Boulton in the Roman Etruscan columbarium fashion, a taste promoted from the 1760s by Robert Adam (d. 1792) and James Wyatt (d. 1813) and appropriate for the furnishing of ladies’ desks, or bonheur-du-jours. The candles’ pearl wreathed “vase” nozzles are incorporated in the lids of these palm-wrapped and wreathed “krater” vases, whose sacred veil drapery and rose-festooned “altar” plinths recall festivities and sacrifices at love’s alter. This poetic theme inspired related laurel-festooned candle vases, such as those that Messrs Matthew Boulton (d. 1809) and John Fothergill of Birmingham hoped to sell in 1770 to Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales (Goodison, op. cit., pl. 328). The firm’s pattern for marble vases in the “antique taste” are in the firm’s archives (Ibid., pl. 250). And a pair of enamel bodied vases, like the present pair, but with drapery swags instead of laurel swags, is illustrated (Ibid., p. 291, pl. 249). Goodison illustrates one of the enamel-bodied pair disassembled in pl. 108, the component parts being the same as those of the present pair. Virtually identical pairs were sold Christie’s London, November 24, 2004, lot 120, and Bonham's London, July 3, 2012, lot 55 Condition report disclaimer