Antique Rococo Porcelain Potiche Vase, 1700s

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Item description:
A wonderful, extremely rare vase, a small potiche, made of fine vitrified hard-paste porcelain, entirely decorated by hand … Read more Item description:
A wonderful, extremely rare vase, a small potiche, made of fine vitrified hard-paste porcelain, entirely decorated by hand and embellished with delicate pure gold finishes. Decorated with a blue checkerboard pattern on a white background to recreate the effect of a cloth, a classic decoration of the Chantilly manufacture, enriched with two large oval windows with golden frames on the front and back, containing a pair of roosters entirely decorated by hand and four other vaguely ellipsoidal windows, two at the top and two at the bottom, on both sides of the vase, also with bird-themed decorations. Finally, two more similar windows are present on the lid of the vase. Signed under the base with a gold hunting horn under enamel, the classic mark of the French Chantilly factory used around the mid-1700s. To be fair, it should be noted that the shape of the base clearly suggests that the vase was intended to be placed on a separate base, which is missing.

Useful information for evaluating the item:
In the last photos, we have included some historical notes on the manufacturer with many of the marks used, taken from an important French text specializing in European porcelain marks. Ours is one of the first nine marks, all hunting horns used in the 1700s and made, as you can read in the notes in French, in gold or red. Later, the mark changed to the word "Chantilly." Through some online research, we found a plate with the exact same blue square decoration on a white background, also richly finished with gold decorations and birds very similar to those on our vase, also depicted in ellipsoidal frames of various sizes, dated by the art expert to 1753-1760 (see last photo). Our vase is therefore almost 300 years old, and the evident patina covering the object confirms our dating. The vase is broken and glued back together, as is often the case with such antique pieces. The repair work has been done well and the break is not particularly visible, as you can see from the numerous photos. Our research has also shown that the oldest pieces made by this manufacturer are offered on the Internet (one of the most important online art galleries) at very high prices. In fact, two porcelain vases with gilded bronze bases, also from the 1700s, are offered at almost €14,000, while a cache pot from the 1700s is also priced at almost €14,000. Finally, a small sauce boat and a small oval plate from 1770, much simpler in workmanship and decoration, are offered at over €2,200 for the sauce boat and over €1,100 for the small plate, prices discounted from the original asking prices of almost €3,000 and almost €1,500 respectively. All this to give an idea of the value of our vase.

Information about the artist and/or manufacturer:
The factory was founded by Louis Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, in 1730 in his castle in Chantilly. In 1725, the alchemist Cicaire Cirou developed a soft porcelain paste, i.e., without kaolin, which nevertheless differed from ceramics in its translucent appearance, as the cream color of the soft paste was masked by a milky white glaze. This paste was obtained by adding bone ash; fired at a lower temperature than hard porcelain, it allowed for a wider range of colors to be used. The Prince of Condé was a passionate collector of Chinese and Japanese porcelain, and therefore asked his factory to imitate the designs and colors of oriental porcelain, in particular the Japanese Kakiemon style, characterized by red and green-blue colors. In 1740, the Crown took the best workers from Chantilly into its service to found the Vincennes factory, which was later transferred to become the Manufacture Royale de Sèvres. The trademark of Chantilly porcelain is the hunting horn. The marks are often accompanied by letters (indicating the series).


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