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A vase like this was created to contain potpourri, a mixture of flowers, herbs, and spices emitting ambient fragrance. This specific function offered a particularly fertile ground for the development of French porcelain, as manufactories experimented with forms, surface ornamentations, and placement of perforations.
France, Saint Cloud, 18th century
soft-paste porcelain
Overall: 15 cm (5 7/8 in.)
Did you know...
Prior to Saint-Cloud's development of soft-paste porcelain in the 1690s, rumors spread throughout Europe that the prized material was made by burying a variety of materials, including lobster shells, in the ground for eighty years.
The Norweb Collection
In 486 BC, Xerxes succeeded Darius I as king of Persia. His empire, then the world’s largest and most powerful, encompassed an area from Libya to western India and from Ethiopia to Afghanistan. This relief fragment of one of his guards probably comes from the west stairway of his enormous palace at Persepolis. As chronicled by Herodotus, the Greeks defeated Xerxes in a clash of conflicting political systems: democracy and monarchy.
Iran, Achaemenid (550–330 BCE), Persepolis
gray limestone
Overall: 53 x 43.6 cm (20 7/8 x 17 3/16 in.)
Did you know...
This relief was probably once brightly painted.
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund