Empire 'Sarreguemines' Stoneware Vase with Bronze ornaments

Empire Stoneware Vase with Bronze ornaments.
Stoneware, patinated bronze.
France.
ca. 1810.
h. 35 cm.

This brown stoneware baluster-shaped vase is one of the productions from the Sarreguemines workshops of the early 19th century under the direction of François-Paul Utzschneider and Joseph Fabri. Between 1799 and 1815, the Sarreguemines workshops produced objets of art in a material which, when polished, could imitate hard stones.

Utzschneider’s (sometimes spelled Urtzschneider, Urschneider, or Urscheider) and Fabri’s workshops supplied, in the early 19th century, several stoneware vases and candelabra to the French ‘Mobilier national’, the most famous piece being a large vase preserved in the Queen of Belgium's room at Trianon.

A pair of vases with the exact same shape was sold for 10,000 € in Paris on April 14, 2010 at Sotheby’s. Those are without the bronze ornated handles that the present vase possesses : lion’s heads and volutes adorned with acanthus leaves around the vase’s neck. These exact bronze ornaments are found on another pair, of the exact same model, but with gilded bronzes, sold for 18,750 € on May 5, 2011, in Paris, this time at Christie’s.

Sources

Philippe Malgouyres and Clément Blanc-Riehl, Porphyre. La Pierre pourpre des Ptolémées aux Bonaparte, Paris, 2003.