18th Century Soft Porcelain Vase with Kakiemon Decoration from Chantilly, Mennecy Saint-Cloud, France

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MEASUREMENTS:
Height: 22.3 cm; Width: 15.5 cm; Depth: 13 cm; Weight: 0.970 kg

A refined and exceptional ribbed vase in … Read more MEASUREMENTS:
Height: 22.3 cm; Width: 15.5 cm; Depth: 13 cm; Weight: 0.970 kg

A refined and exceptional ribbed vase in polychrome and vitrified Chantilly soft porcelain, a superb example of 18th-century French decorative ceramic art, featuring two spectacular sculptural handles in the shape of lizards. The piece was entirely handcrafted following the most rigorous technical standards of early French craftsmanship, starting with casting on a ribbed matrix and then proceeding to a delicate high-temperature firing—an extreme technical challenge for the soft porcelain of the time, which tended to collapse easily in the kiln. The body of the vase features a slender silhouette, animated by vertical grooves that create a suggestive play of light and shadow, culminating in a flared neck with a mixtilinear profile, finished on the upper side with an elegant pure gold trim. The pictorial decoration, meticulously executed by hand on the lid, is inspired by the famous Japanese exotic Kakiemon style, with a color palette dominated by iron red, cobalt blue, sulfur yellow, and copper green. The front and back feature splendid flowering branches, stylized oriental-style rocks, and a small exotic bird with finely drawn polychrome plumage. The vase's rarest elements are undoubtedly the two large lizards that serve as handles, modeled in relief with extraordinary plastic vigor; the reptiles are decorated with small brush strokes in shades of green and yellow to simulate the texture of scales, with legs highlighted in blue and open jaws tinged with iron red, lending an exquisitely rococo dynamism to the entire composition. The work can be dated to the manufacturer's golden age, specifically between 1740 and 1760, and was produced in the famous factory in Chantilly, France. Under the base of the vase is the original signature, executed with a brush in iron red over varnish, depicting a finely stylized hunting horn. The attribution to the Chantilly factory is unequivocal and rigorously documented: the mark on the back corresponds precisely to the number 4 shown in the photos below the , taken from one of our volumes in French, with historical notes and numerous marks used by the factory. Ours is one of the oldest graphic variations, characterized by the typical asymmetrical and fluid strokes applied freehand by the 18th-century painters of the Prince of Condé. The key factors behind the attribution also lie in the special consistency of the soft vitreous paste, the typical warm, slightly ivory hue of the cover (a distinctive feature prior to 1755, before the introduction of more yellowish lead-bearing covers), and the sublime execution of the thick, glossy glazes—elements impossible to replicate in even the most famous 19th-century imitations.
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