This celebrated model is one of the earliest types of Sèvres vases à monter and, judging from the number of surviving examples, the most enduringly successful. The model of this vase was produced from 1765 by by the marchand-mercier and perfumier Jean Dulac(1704-1786). Dulac was a champion of neo-classicism and the gout grec, a fashion manifested on the present lot in the Greek key-pattern cast mounts and satyr masks. Of the surviving examples of this model the majority, like the present lot, appear to have bodies in dark blue Sèvres porcelain but there are also examples in green and bleu celéste. There were two main variations of this model. The larger type was adorned with lion-mask mounts and the cover could be removed to reveal a candelabrum; an example of this model made for Madame Du Barry is currently at Versailles (inv. F 586 C.1). The second variation, of which our present lot is an example, saw the lion masks replaced with satyr heads. A drawing for this design is currently in the Met in New York (inv. 61.680.1), formerly in the collection of the Dukes of Saxe-Teschen.
While it is certain that Jean Dulac created this type of vase, as his use of the word 'invenit' confirms, it is interesting to note that the Manufacture du Sèvres had the right to sell them directly. This fact is confirmed by the two vases-cloches at the Palace of Pavlovsk, which were acquired directly from Sèvres in 1782 through the intermediary Prince Baryatinski for the sum of 1680 livres. Recorded in the chambre à coucher and then in the cabinet de travail of Grand Duke Paul's appartements, they comprise a garniture with a third pot-pourri vase of the lion-mask model (illustrated in A. de Gourcoff, Pavlovsk: The Collections, Vol. II, Leningrad, 1993, p. 150, fig. 20). However, the attribution of this group to Dulac is further confirmed by Horace Walpole's visit to Madame Dulac in the autumn of 1765. Walpole acquired, among other things, three closely related vases mounted with satyr-masks for his friend John Chute at the cost of 19 guineas (illustrated F.J.B. Watson, Walpole and the Taste for French Porcelain in Eighteenth-Century England, 1967 p185-194). Walpole wrote in his diary of this acquisition: ‘A light blue potpourri of Sevre mounted in ormolu’ and ‘ Two vases of blue china mounted in ormolu’ (ibid. pp. 462, 500). A comparable vase in blue celeste was sold Artcurial Paris, 15 December 2010, lot 35 and a
There were in fact three marchand-merciers by the name of Dulac established in the rue Saint Honoré between 1760 and 1790. Traditionally, 'Dulac' has been identified as either the marchand Antoine Dulac or his son Antoine Charles. In reality, however, the marchand-mercier who specialised in the commercialisation of Sèvres porcelain was Jean Dulac.
The son of Charles Dulac, Jean was born in 1704 and became a marchand-gantier-parfumeur before 1740. First married in 1728, following the death of his first wife he remarried in 1743. At this date, his furniture and effects were valued at the notable sum of 24,000 livres. He was appointed marchand privilégié du Roi on 16 May 1753 and, following that, marchand-bijoutier. Jean Dulac resided on the rue Saint Honoré, the majority of the building being allotted to the workshops and parfumerie. His signboard of 'le berceau d'or', inherited from his father, appears in several of his bills, while others carry the phrase 'Dulac marchand-gantier-parfumeur et bijoutier rue Saint Honoré près de l'Oratoire à la tête d'or'. Dulac's trade flourished and for several decades he supplied the leading European nobility. He retired, childless, in 1774 having made his fortune, but kept an eye over the shop, which he had rented out following the sale of part of his stock to P.A. Le Baigue for 66,000 livres. The latter replaced Dulac as marchand privilégié du Roi on 24 February 1775. Dulac died in his house in the rue Saint Honoré in 1786, leaving his cousin, the painter Charles Louis Clérisseau, as one of his principal heirs.