In the Louis XV style, the spout profusely cast with rocaille and foliate motifs and modelled as scrolling acanthus, with a scrolling handle cast with acanthus and surmounted by a dragon, the ring-turned baluster body on a circular base cast with ribbon-entwined reeding, above a pierced foliate and rock-cast base
Each: 24 in. (60.9 cm.) high

Almost certainly acquired by Ivor Churchill Guest (1873-1939), 1st Viscount Wimborne, for Ashby St Ledgers Manor, Northamptonshire, where pictured in the Dining Room before 1951,
thence by descent.

'Ashby St Ledgers, Northamptonshire - III', Country Life, vol. CX, 10 August 1951, pp. 420-23, fig. 6.

For further information on the collection of the Viscounts Wimborne please visit the tab ‘The Wimborne Collection’ on the main sale page.

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Lot Essay

This pair of ewers is inspired by a small group of similar vessels that combined exotic Chinese porcelains with dragon-mounted ormolu handles. Interestingly Gabriel de Saint-Aubin drew a ewer of very similar design into the margins of the Louis-Jean Gaignat sale catalogue of 14 February 1769, and the pair of ewers he illustrated are likely the same which eventually sold from The Collections of Lily & Edmond J. Safra, Sotheby's, New York, 3-4 November 2005, lot 130 ($1,248,000).Surviving examples of similar form from the 18th century include a pair of ormolu-mounted Kangxi vases surmounted by dragons, originally from the Duc d'Aumont collection, and a garniture incorporating very similar crackle grey celadon porcelain in the Louvre (D. Alcouffe, et al., Gilt bronzes in the Louvre, Dijon, 2004, cats. 40 - 42, pp. 89 - 93). Most recently, a very similar pair of Louis XV ewers formerly in the collection of Gregory de Ligne Gregory at Harlaxton Manor sold Christie's, London, 5 July 2012, lot 11.