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Elephant Candelabrum Vase (Vase à Tête d'Eléphant)

A work made of soft-paste porcelain, polychrome enamels, and gilding.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • A work made of soft-paste porcelain, polychrome enamels, and gilding.

Date:

c. 1757–58

Artist:

Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory (French, founded 1740)
Design attributed to Jean-Claude Duplessis (French, c. 1695-1774)
Painted by Pierre-Louis-Philippe Armand (French, active 1758-1781)

About this artwork

This model is one of the more exotic forms created by Jean-Claude Duplessis. The elephants’ trunks originally supported double candle sockets that are now missing. The idea of combining elephant heads with a vase may have derived from a Ming dynasty Chinese vase or a Meissen candelabrum. The Sèvres painter Pierre-Louis-Philippe Armand accentuated the sensuous qualities of the elephants by framing their brown eyes with pink lids and long eyelashes.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Applied Arts of Europe

Artist

Jean-Claude Duplessis (Designer)

Title

Elephant Candelabrum Vase (Vase à Tête d'Eléphant)

Place

Sèvres (Object made in)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1757–1758

Medium

Soft-paste porcelain, polychrome enamels, and gilding

Inscriptions

Mark: interlaced L's enclosing letter E with dots above and below; "482" in red overglaze; incised on body on base: "MLi"

Dimensions

38.5 × 25 × 14.7 cm (15 1/8 × 9 13/16 × 5 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Joseph Maier and Arthur Lewis Liebman Memorial: Gift of Kenneth J. Maier, M.D.

Reference Number

1986.3446

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/108575/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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