Footnotes

• Provenance: Heslington Hall, Yorkshire
  
  Whilst the painted figures on the present examples resemble the work of both Pillement and Boucher, any souce prints have not been traced. It is quite likely that the painter responsible came to the Giles workshop via Chelsea and remembered decoration used on Chelsea vases during the Gold Anchor Period. No similar figure painting is known from the Giles workshop, although there are parallels with the celebrated Worcester hexagonal vase and cover from the Lady Binning Collection at Fenton House (National Trust, inv no. 1448132). Pink scale decoration on Worcester porcelain is a controversial area but if it is authentic, it is likely the Fenton House vase also originated in the Giles Workshop. The figures on the Fenton House vase are taken from the series Allégoires des Douze Mois de L'Année in L'Oeuvre de Jean Pillement, published in London in 1759. The vase is illustrated by Maria Gordon-Smith, The Influence of Jean Pillement on French and English Decorative Arts, Pt 2 (2000), p.131.
  
  The panels around the shoulder of the present vases use the distinctive thin gilding associated with the Giles workshop. These panels are based on Kakiemon porcelain, also probably by way of Chelsea. Queen Mary II of England amassed a substantial collection of Kakiemon porcelain and an inventory of her Hampton Court apartments included 'coloured jars of six squares'. As a result vases of this shape in Kakiemon or Chelsea porcelain have become known as 'Hampton Court Vases'.
  
  The flower painting on the present lot represents Giles' middle period style, including 'summer jasmine' and the so called 'stringy branches' which sometimes accompany 'Naturalistic' birds.

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Category: Decorative Arts / European Ceramics

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