Pair of ‘cashmere’ palette small flower vases

Each with a heart-shaped lower section painted on the front with ‘Flora’ supporting in her right arm a flower- filled cornucopia, holding in her extended left hand a bouquet of flowers and seated amidst a profusion of blossoms, the reverse with a flower-filled urn, and the blue-ground sides reserved with floral sprigs surrounding the green open-mouthed beasts forming the handles, the shoulder with four tubular spouts, and the integral upper section formed as an ogee-molded plinth with an iron-red-ground floral border above a scroll band, and supporting an obelisk decorated on each side with a sinuous flowering vine above a tubular spout, the spouts all decorated with a floral sprig, and the green-ground flaring rectangular foot reserved on each side with a small oval panel or roundel enclosing a floral sprig.

Heart-shaped vases with spouts surmounted by obelisks are known in three sizes, ranging from the present model with one layer of spouts on the obelisk, to extended models with three or four layers of spouts on the obelisk top. This pair is the first polychrome version of the smaller size to be documented, and it is closely related in color palette to two larger versions in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (cited below), of which one is marked for Lambertus van Eenhoorn of De Metaale Pot (The Metal Pot) Factory (1691-1724). As evidenced by the similar examples listed below, De Grieksche A (The Greek A) Factory under the ownership of Adrianus Kocx from 1687 to 1701, simultaneously produced the same model in blue and white versions.