PROVENANCE
  Possibly with Marie Zorobabel Munier, his sale, 6 May 1795, lot 78.
  Sold, Christie’s, London, 25th March 1985, lot 28.
  Christie’s, New York, 26th October 1995, lot 81.

EXHIBITED
The International Ceramics Fair & Seminar, London, Vincennes and Sèvres Porcelain From a European Private Collection, 15th-18th June 2001, catalogue by Adrian Sassoon, n° 13.

CATALOGUE NOTE
The vase en flacon à cordes was introduced in 1766, the moulds recorded in the 1767 inventory. (MNS, I.7, 1767).
A vase of the same form painted with dock scenes by Morin on a bleu céleste ground and dated 1771 is in the Tuck collection at the Petit Palais, Paris (Marcelle Brunet and Tamara Préaud, Sèvres, des origines à nos jours, Fribourg, 1978, p. 186, pl. 185). Another example is in the Jones collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Madame Victoire bought in December 1772 2 vazes flacons verd pastoralles for 432 livres each. Pierre Verlet has identified them with the pair of vases from Lord Hillingdon collection now in the Kress collection in the Metropolitan Museum of New York (Pierre Verlet, « Some historical Sèvres porcelains preserved in the United States », The Art Quaterly, XVII, 3, 1954, p. 237). There are painted on green ground with La Chasse and La Pêche after Boucher by Charles Nicolas Dodin (Carl Dauterman, Decorative Art from the Samuel H. Kress collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1964, n° 52, pp. 327-28).
A pair with with gilt oeil de perdrix on beau bleu ground was sold at Christie’s, New York, 21st Ocotber 2005, lot 139.

The ground colour used on this vase is known as bleu Fallot, invented in 1764 by the Sèvres worker Jean Armand Fallot. An écuelle in the musée national de Céramique de Sèvres is dated 1764 and bears Fallot’s mark. It was usually covered with œil de perdrix or circles of dots gilding. This ground could be partially scraped away permitting a new tecnhique known as fleurs incrustées (inlaid flowers).
This decoration was used on wares and ornamental pieces from 1766 to at least 1771. Eleven vases painted in 1769 with grisaille by Genest on the Bleu Fallot ground with fleurs incrusté are known. This ground colour with fleurs incrustées is also found on a pair of vases œufs and a vase à panneaux preserved in the Fine Arts Museum of San Francesco, on a pair of vases Bachelier dated 1769 in the musée du Louvre (OA 10890, Pierre Ennès, Un Défi au Goût, 1997, n° 47, p. 98) and on a vase à glands dated 1768 (Valérie Bougault, "La Passion du Sèvres", Connaissance des Arts, October 2004, n° 620, illustrated p. 61).

This vase was likely still in stock at Sèvres in 1774. In the inventory of the stock on 1st Januart 1774 is listed : 1 vase flacon à cordes fond bleu fleurs incrustées ....312 livres.

The description of a Sèvres vase from the collection of Monsieur Munier sold at auction in Paris on 6 April 1795 is precise enough to suggest that our vase flacon à cordes or an unrecorded similar one was in his collection : Lot 78 Un Vafe fond bleu-turque, à petites mouches en or, à touffes & guirlandes de fleurs colorées, avec cordes demi-relief & anneaux dorés, posé sur un socle en marbre blanc. Hauteur totale : 15 pouc.(about 40,5 cm).

The phrase bleu turque doesn’t necessarily mean turquoise blue in contemporary records ; In the auction catalogue of Julienne in 1777, two Sèvres pots pourris are described with a bleu céleste ground. On the same page, another pair of Sèvres vases are described fond bleu turque, probably meaning that the two colours were differents.

The word touffes means sprays of flowers, while the terms mouches d’or likely describes the gilt œil de perdrix on the ground colour. This wording is used by the Sèvres factory in the overtime records in 1767 and 1768 to described gilt circles on the ground ; Leguay received 12 livres for avoir doré un pot à l’eau et jatte en verd a mouches d’or which is likely the one at the Wallace Collection (Savill, op. cit., C454-5, p. 708). Other Sèvres vases bear applied ropes : the vase à gland mentioned above has a decoration matching to catalogue description but this vase has no gilt rings ; the vase antique ferré has both ropes and rings, but all the examples known are painted with figures and the descriptions are fine in the catalogue. He had for example Deux Vases couverts, en porcelaine de Sèvres, fond blanc, à serpens formant anses, les corps & couvercles à dessins de Châteaux et Pagodes, genre Chinois, sur fût de colonne fond bleu, à entrelacs de branchages, fleurs & filets dorés, posés sur socle en albâtre. Hauteur totale : 15 pouces.

Most of the vases and caisses à fleurs in the collection of Munier were mounted on white marble stands. Like his pair of chinoiserie vases, the Sèvres porcelain mostly seems to date from the late 1770’s or early 1780’s : cups and saucers with yellow, plum or blue grounds painted with chinoiserie in gold, a déjeuner with teapot, sugar bowl, and two cups and saucers painted outside and inside with lapis lazuli ground, a gold ground cup and saucer, but some others could be earlier.

Marie Zorobabel Munier de Montengis was Médecin en chef de l’Hotel Royal des Invalides (Almanach Royal, 1789, p. 207 and Histoire de l’Académie Royal des Sciences, 1753). He was doctor at the Invalides from 1742, he received the ’Ordre de Saint Michel and was ennobled in 1772. In 1775 he wrote an essay titled an a globulosa sanguinis parte ad cutem appelentis, ethiopum color ? His furniture includes a mid-18th Century black lacquer desk said to be by Crescent in the sale catalogue but also mahogany pieces that suggest several stages of purchasing.