This vase, with its fierce and finely-cast swan handles, executes a design published in 1770 by Pierre-Elisabeth de Fontanieu (d. 1784). Fontanieu was a polymath deeply involved in the decorative arts at the dawn of French Neoclassicism. As an administrator, he served as intendant et contrôleur général des meubles de la Couronne from 1767 to 1783, overseeing the furnishing of Royal palaces through the transition in elite taste from the waning Rococo to the novel Antique style. Fontanieu built close working relationships with leaders of the decorative trades, including Jean-Henri Riesener and Quentin-Claude Pitoin, each of whom provided Neoclassical-taste objects for his own apartments. He was also an elected member of the Académie d'Architecture, as well as the Académie des Sciences, writing texts on the fabrication of simulated gems and enamel colors, and operating a laboratory of his own with a prominent collection of lathes, which he eventually sold to Louis XVI in 1780 for the sum of 50,000 livres.

The design for the present lot appears in his 1770 monograph on turned forms, Collection de vases inventés et dessinés par M. de Fontanieu, a folio-volume of engraved designs for vases, urns and pedestal-clocks in Neoclassical style. The book is dedicated to the craft of the turner, presenting 33 designs each in two stages: first as an unornamented profile, representing an object freshly removed from a lathe, and second with a scheme of decoration to its body, representing the same object now finished with handles, chasing and further embellishment. A number of these designs were realized in porcelain by the Sèvres factory, beginning with a number of shapes all called ‘vases Fontanieux’ by the factory, first produced in the 1770s. For a pair of these, see those sold Christie’s, New York, 1 November 2023, lot 503. For a short biography of Fontanieu, see S. Eriksen, Early Neoclassicism in France, London, 1974, p. 374.