Pair of two-handled vases with covers

Art Historical Context

The image reveals a single example from this pair of covered vases, standing on a square base with a tall, urn-shaped body of vivid turquoise soft-paste porcelain. Circular white reserves, each framed in gold, hold delicately painted pink roses scattered across the surface, while ornate gilt-bronze handles curve outward in graceful loops. The domed lid repeats the rose motif and is crowned by a textured finial, all mounted in gilded metal that adds a rich contrast to the cool blue ground. Produced in France during the nineteenth century by an unknown maker, these vases reflect the period’s renewed interest in refined porcelain forms inspired by earlier courtly traditions. Their compact scale and careful decoration highlight the technical skill of French ceramic workshops, which continued to produce elegant objects for domestic display long after the height of eighteenth-century production. Now part of the Metropolitan Museum’s holdings in European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, the pair was given to the museum in 1943 by Ann Payne Blumenthal.