Four French Louis XVI mounted vases

A set of four mounted marble ornamental vases. The egg-shaped marble vase bodies are each contained within a horizontal band to which the upwards-curving handles are affixed. The handles also form the starting and ending point of the vine festoons that elegantly drape along the vases’ bodies. The bodies are crowned with a faux lid in the shape of dependent leaves, topped with a pine cone. The vases are borne by an elegant, flaring foot that stands upon a double concave plinth.

Mounting valuable stone objects in order to draw attention to them, protect them or give them a new function was a practice that began in the Middle Ages. Later, in the Renaissance, it started to be applied to other natural objects as well, such as ostrich eggs, nautilus shells, coconuts, rhinoceros horns, and so on. From the seventeenth century onwards, collectors broadened their interests to include not only the unusual, but the decorative as well. Mounted objects were no longer meant only to be placed in a cabinet of curiosities; instead, they became part of a house’s furnishings.

From the late eighteenth century on, the process by which the final object was produced changed: the object and its mounting were now designed as a single whole. The idea of a mounted object in which two different materials emphasise each other was thus maintained, but the intent to distract from the object’s original function and the confrontation between two cultures brought together by means of the mounting were lost.