Bottle
Category
Ceramics
Date
1750 (circa) - 1810 (circa)
Materials
Handmade ceramic
Measurements
320 mm (Height); 35 mm (Diameter)
Order this imageCollection
Charlecote Park, Warwickshire
NT 532388
Summary
Pair of vases, porcelain, bottle-shaped, made in Jingdezhen, China, c. 1750–1810, decorated with a lavender-blue monochrome glaze and with later ormolu mounts (on the base, around the base of the neck and to attach handles to the neck) in a pseudo-Chinese style (including ruyi fungus and butterfly motifs) reminiscent of the output of the firm of Benjamin Lewis Vulliamy (1780–1854).
Full description
These vases once formed part of the collection of William Thomas Beckford (1760-1844). Beckford curated a substantial collection with wealth derived from his position as an absentee enslaver and plantation landlord. He was the fourth generation of enslavers and had inherited 15 Jamaican plantations in 1770 (i). Due to mismanagement, lawsuits and the decline in sugar profits, Beckford was forced to sell his collection and his home Fonthill Abbey (ii). The entirety of the collection and estate was intended to be sold at auction in 1822, although this was cancelled as a private buyer was found. The new buyer sold the collection by auction in 1823 (iii). George Hammond Lucy (1789-1845) purchased this vase and its companion at the 1823 sale, lot 1278. While the auction catalogue describes the vases as puce coloured, this was corrected to blue by Lucy in the manuscript now at Warwickshire County Record Office (iv). In her family biography, Lucy’s wife, Mary Elizabeth (1803-1890) recorded the vases on top of the ebony commode (also bought at the Fonthill sale) in the Drawing Room (v). (i) 'William Thomas Beckford', Legacies of British Slave-Ownership database, UCL, accessed 30/05/2024. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/22232 (ii) See Boyd Alexander, (trans. and ed.), Life at Fonthill 1807-1822 With Interludes in Paris and London. From the Correspondence of William Beckford, (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1957); England’s Wealthiest Son: A Study of William Beckford, (London: Centaur Press Lt., 1962); Amy Frost, ‘The Beckford Era’ in Caroline Dakers (ed.), Fonthill Recovered: A Cultural History, (London: UCL Press, 2018), pp. 59-93. (iii) Caroline Dakers ‘The break-up of the Fonthill estate’ in Caroline Dakers (ed.), Fonthill Recovered: A Cultural History, (London: UCL Press, 2018), pp. 97-98. (iv) Warwickshire County Record Office, L6/1116. (v) Mary Elizabeth Lucy, Biography of the Lucy Family at Charlecote Park in the County of Warwick, (London: privately printed by Emily Faithful & Co, 1862), p.130.
Provenance
On loan from Sir Edmund Fairfax-Lucy, 6th Bt (b. 1945)