Neoclassical Lidded Urn With Lion Mask Handles Transferware, Italy, 20th C.

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Description

A beautiful Mottahedeh Italian porcelain lidded urn in the neoclassical style. The white body features a large polychrome floral bouquet … Read more A beautiful Mottahedeh Italian porcelain lidded urn in the neoclassical style. The white body features a large polychrome floral bouquet — roses, tulips, carnations, and bellflowers — in cerise, blush, violet, and yellow. Applied lion mask handles in deep green flank each side. The wide sweeping lid has a pink ground with ivy transferware border, echoed on the circular foot, and is topped with a crisp artichoke finial. Rich green banding trims the rim, stem, and base throughout. Triple-view photos show all angles.

There is an old professional repair to the foot of the urn, otherwise in very good vintage condition — no chips or cracks noted.
Measures: 12.5” x 7.5” x 5.5”
~ A NOTE ON CREIL WARE & NEOCLASSICAL DESIGN ~

Creil ware takes its name from the Creil manufactory in northern France, founded in 1797, which became one of Europe's great centers of transferware production. Drawing on English creamware techniques, Creil perfected the art of printing intricate designs — classical motifs, pastoral scenes, botanical studies — onto fine earthenware, making refined decorative ceramics accessible to a broader audience during the Empire and Restoration periods. The ivy garland border on this piece is a hallmark of the Creil tradition, as is the pairing of a clean white ground with rich, painterly decoration.

Neoclassical design, which swept Europe from the mid-18th century onward, was a direct response to the archaeological discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Designers looked to ancient Greece and Rome for their vocabulary of form: the urn shape itself, lion mask handles, laurel and ivy borders, pedestal feet, and restrained symmetry all speak directly to that classical inheritance. In ceramics, these forms reached their height at Sèvres, Vienna, and the great Italian houses — and were faithfully revived by 20th-century makers like Mottahedeh.

Italy's long porcelain tradition — rooted in the royal manufactories of Doccia (founded 1737), Capodimonte (1743), and later Ginori — gave Italian craftsmen an unrivaled fluency with richly painted, sculptural porcelain. Mottahedeh, the Washington D.C.-based luxury importer, partnered with Italian workshops through much of the 20th century to produce faithful, high-quality reproductions of historic European designs for the American market. Their pieces are now eagerly collected in their own right as fine examples of mid-century decorative art. See less