English: Vase, about 1855, Minton & Co. V&A Museum no. 4323&A-1857

Techniques - Bone china, with bleu celeste (light blue) ground, painted in enamels and gilded

Place - Stoke-on-Trent (city), England

Dimensions - Height 43 cm, Width 23 cm, Depth 23.2 cm

Object Type - This vase was intended to be bought by an affluent collector who wished to demonstrate his wealth with the showy display of porcelain in the French Style, and perhaps also to support a superb, contemporary English manufacturer. The Sèvres porcelain factory's artistic director Alexandre Brongniart (1770-1847) had given Minton & Co. plaster casts from original moulds, which enabled them to make close copies of Sèvres wares. Mintons mastered the successful firing of an even ground (background) colour on their bone china, especially of bleu celeste (light blue), emerald green and 'Rose-du-Barry' (rosy) pink. This meant the company was able to make wares that were cleaner and crisper than Sèvres' own soft-paste porcelain. They also claimed their wares had 'whiteness and transparency...increased'.

People -

Minton & Co.'s art director Léon Arnoux (1816-1902) joined the factory from France in 1849. He was deeply interested in the styles and techniques of historic French ceramics. French porcelain of the 18th century was collected by the rich and well-travelled such as the international banking family of the Rothschilds. Private collections such as theirs were studied by Mintons under Arnoux' direction. Presumably the Rothschilds gave permission for their name to be given to this Minton version of an 18th-century Sèvres vase triangulaire (a triangular vase of three bulbous parts attached to scrolled feet). It was probably painted by Thomas Allen (1831-1915), who trained at Stoke School of Art and the School of Design at Marlborough House, London, and specialised in painting in the French Style.