A GARNITURE OF GILT-BRONZE-MOUNTED SÈVRES SOFT-PASTE BLEU CÉLESTE PORCELAIN VASES THE GOÛT GREC MOUNTS ATTRIBUTED TO JEAN DULAC, LOUIS XV, CIRCA 1760-70

each vase of archaic Chinese flask form, the larger vase with moulded lines and two square holes on each side of foot, with ormolu gadrooned rims, on a laurel wreath foot and square base, ram's head mounts surmounted by husks garlands and angular handles, the pair of smaller vases with moulded strap ornaments and animal-shaped handles, with conforming ormolu rims and bases, the laurel garland mounts suspended from rings embellished with lamb's head, each with incised mark 5 to the underside

In overall very good condition. Exceptionally rare model. The colour of the porcelain and gilding on p. 185 is a close match. The porcelain: One small vase with a hairline crack to rim (approx.. 3 in long), 2 smaller to either side, approx.. 1in and ½ in long. The gilt-bronze mounts: They are of very good quality with superb casting and chasing. The gilding is original. There is very minor rubbing to the bases and some very minor casting flaws and pitting which do not detract from the piece. The gilt-bronze rim of the large vase has a very small dent which is hardly noticeable. A drawing, amongst other drawings of Imperial ancient bronzes privately printed for the Emperor Qianlong in 1750 and sent directly from Amint, a Jesuit Priest in Peking to Berthin at Sèvres in 1767, has recently come to light. This further supports the design of the present garniture and the Sèvres 'Vase Indien B' plaster model.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This magnificent gilt-bronze-mounted Sèvres garniture is a fascinating and most unusual example of the fashion for lachinage, the Paris version of the European passion for all aspects of the Oriental, in the early to middle part of the eighteenth century.
The general fashion for Far Eastern works of art might well be said to have found its beginnings in the last years of the 17th century¹, but the specific taste for ormolu-mounted oriental porcelain seems to have developed later in the 18th century, and the Parisian marchands-merciers played a crucial role. These influential dealers were the arbiters and shapers of fashion, and provided the most up-to-date “curiosities propres pour l’ornement des appartments”². Sometimes they themselves were bronze- founders, commissioning works from the Sèvres factory and elsewhere, but generally they acted as the co-ordinators of artisans from numerous guilds, designing new models to adapt rare and exotic materials, especially from the Far East, to the Parisian taste. Their products ranged from gold-mounted snuffboxes to furniture with Japanese or Chinese lacquer panels.
As ever larger quantities of oriental porcelain were imported to Europe throughout the eighteenth century, and the porcelain alone was thus losing its exceptional character, the marchands-merciers ingeniously mounted the pieces in ever more elaborate gilt-bronze Rococo mounts. The asymmetrical C-scroll and acanthus fitted in perfectly with the Oriental aesthetic, and with ideas of non-European perspective and arbitrary distribution of figures and landscape; see for example the pair of ormolu-mounted celadon porcelain vases of circa 1745-1750, lot XXVII in this sale. The purpose was no longer simply to emphasize the exotic character of the porcelain, but to modify their foreign appearance, sometimes even giving them a new function, as incense burners or pot-pourri holders with pierced mounts.
Even if several marchands-merciers were dealing in lachinage in Paris earlier³, the real explosion seems to have happened very suddenly in the 1740s. The first French Crown purchases of the kind were in 1741, only a year after a large consignment of such goods for Mlle la Comtesse de Mailly, one of Louis XV’s mistresses, was acquired for her apartment. By 1748, the rage for mounted oriental porcelain was at its peak, and, in his journal for that period, the doyen of marchands-merciers, Lazare-Duvaux, recorded innumerable pieces delivered to his clients, more than 150 to the Marquise de Pompadour alone⁴.
As progressively, in the 1760s-1770s, the development of a more austere neoclassical taste, or goût à la grecque, appeared, the monochrome Chinese and Japanese pieces became more en vogue. Simultaneously, economic pressures were brought on the marchands-merciers to patronize the newly created French porcelain made by the Sevres manufactory. Lazare-Duvaux himself, who was attached to the factory as an advisor, provided an increasing number of mounted pieces in porcelaine de France.
Significantly, the Sèvres factory began at this point to produce monochrome wares of oriental forms, of which this garniture is a perfect example. The plaster model for the smaller vases of this garniture is recorded as ‘vase indien B’ (fig. 3) and is remarkably close to a Qianlong (1736-95) celadon prototype (fig. 4)⁵. The form of the larger vase is so far unidentified in the Sèvres archives but an ormolu-mounted Chinese Celadon porcelain vase of the type is depicted in the portrait of Baron de Besenval (fig. 1). The turquoise colour itself, or bleu celeste, one of the most fashionable colours of the 1760s, somewhat echoes the colour used on porcelain during the Kangxi period (1654-1722)⁶. The turquoise ‘pot-pourri en coquille’ or ‘sucrier limacons’, after a Qing dynasty (1662-1722) model, is probably the most frequently found example (fig. 5 & 6) and pairs were acquired by Madame du Barry, the 6th Earl of Coventry, and the Duc d’Aumont. Horace Walpole also owned a pair of turquoise pots-pourri at Strawberry Hill, and there is some doubt as to whether these were in fact Sèvres or Chinese examples⁷.

The Sèvres pieces were indeed not marked with the factory's usual interlaced L mark, most probably in order to pass as genuine Chinese porcelain. Alexandre Brongniart, director of the factory, was himself deceived by a pair of ormolu-mounted green ewers that he acquired in 1829, for the Musée Céramique de Sèvres⁸. The shapes of the vases now offered for sale are very rare; the porcelain of the garniture was formerly considered to be Chinese. It is only very recently that it was identified as Sèvres, which is confirmed by a barely noticeable modeller’s incised mark 5 on the underside of each vase (Fig. 2), indicating that the vases are indeed made of French soft-paste porcelain. According to Dame Rosalind Savill, the modeller who used this mark was working mainly in the 1750s-1760s on flower, pot-pourri and ornamental vases⁹.
Vessels in these pseudo-oriental forms seem to have been specially intended to be mounted in ormolu by the marchands-merciers, and were described as such (‘vases à monter’) in the Sèvres records. See, for example, a pair of Sèvres bleu céleste vases from the Wrightsman collection, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, with Greek-key pattern handles linked by swags of laurel leaves¹⁰.
A charming feature of the mounts on the present vases is the way in which the large vase is mounted with ram's heads and the smaller pair of vases with lamb's heads thus differentiating between a lamb and full-grown ram on the smaller and larger vase respectively.
Appointed marchand privilégié du Roi in 1753, the marchand mercier Jean Dulac (1704-1786) was a jeweller and perfumier by profession based, with his wife, in the fashionable rue Saint-Honoré. He was also one of the few merchants granted the privilege to retail Sèvres porcelain in Paris, together with Madame Lair, the widow of Michel-Joseph Lair, and Grouet. Dulac's name is frequently found in the archives of the factory between 1758-1776, and he is known to have provided ormolu-mounted Sèvres porcelain to the nobility, including Madame du Barry. Horace Walpole came to his shop À la Tête d'Or, in November 1765 and acquired a three-piece garniture of mounted Sèvres porcelain, also in blue celeste, for his friend John Chute¹¹.

1. Notably after the arrival in 1684 and 1686 of two Siamese embassies at the court of Versailles, see F. Watson, Oriental mounted porcelain, International Exibition Foundations, 1986. 
2. Savery de Brustalons, Dictionnaire de Commerce etc., 1691. See G. Wilson, Mounted Oriental porcelain in the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999. 
3. 1692, the Livre Commode, a sort of shoppers’ guide, lists nearly twenty dealers in lachinage in Paris. 

4. Livre-journal de Lazare Duvaux, marchand-bijoutier ordinaire du roy 1748-1758, Pour la Société des bibliophiles françois, 1873
5. Dame Rosalind Savill, 'Two pairs of Sèvres vases', Apollo, August 1979, pp. 128-133
6. S. Eriksen, The James A. de Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor, Sèvres porcelain, Fribourg, 1968 p. 28. 
7 Christie's London, 8 December 1994, lot 13. 
8. S. Eriksen, op. cit., p. 232
9. Dame Rosalind Savill, The Wallace Collection, catalogue of Sèvres porcelain, 1988, pp.1127. 
10  F. Watson, The Wrightsman Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1966, vol. II, fig. 272. 
11. John Whitehead, The Marchands-Merciers and Sèvres, 1993