Object Details
Object Essay
Although the great majority of Chinese export wares imported to the United States were utilitarian, some pieces were intended purely for ornament. Floor vases, sets of mantel garniture, and pairs of covered urns embellished the parlors of the wealthy or those with close ties to the China trade. Covered urns must have been highly prized for their extravagant size and their European design reference to the antique.
The basic shape of these urns has a Renaissance ancestry. Square, marbleized plinths, “pistol” handles, and loosely rendered laurel-leaf swags have been traced as far back as the designs of the Florentine etcher Stefano della Bella (1610–1664) for Ferdinand de’ Medici.1See Howard and Ayers 1978, 2:557–58, no. 575. Direct sources for the Chinese, however, were more likely English neoclassical models, since Staffordshire potters like Wedgwood & Bentley, Neale & Company, and H. Palmer made similar versions in the 1770s based on della Bella designs published in Robert Sayer’s Ladies Amusement; or Whole Art of Japanning Made Easy (1760, 1762, 1771).2See Buten, 60. For examples of similar vases by Neale and Palmer, see Godden 1975, 153–57. The earliest Chinese examples date from about 1785, when America entered the China trade. This pair of urns descended in the Russell family of Boston, Massachusetts.
Ellen Paul Denker and Bert R. Denker
Excerpted from Clement E. Conger, et al. Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.