Sèvres soft paste porcelain pair of vases. Green ground and gilt decoration, incurved collar and cover with pine cone finial above interlaced rim, splayed gadrooned foot edged with beading and laurel wreath. Four oval reserves on each suspended from studs and bows and with oak leaf surrounds decorated with polychrome paintings of pastoral scenes, posies of flowers to reverse and sides.

In the 1760s, the Sèvres Porcelain Factory focused on a form of painted decoration using single or interlocking flower and leaf wreaths in twos and threes. These were confined to the subsidiary reserves on the back and ends of vases. The flower-wreath painter, Jean-Baptiste Tandart (fl. Sèvres 1754–1803), was particularly renowned for this style of decoration, and records show that he was paid overtime for painting wreaths. Whereas the decoration on the front of such vases usually included scenes inspired by contemporary artists, the reserves on wreathed vases included bouquets of garden flowers, including convolvulus, asters, speedwell, tulips and hollyhocks.

Text adapted from Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden, London, 2015.