Elephant-head vase (vase à tête d'éléphant)

Sèvres Manufactory

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This remarkable Sèvres porcelain elephant-head vase is one of six in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, four of which were given by Charles and Jayne Wrightsman. Presumably due to the technical challenges and cost of making these vases, relatively few were produced at Sèvres, all which date to the years around 1760; nineteen examples are known in public collections today. The mate to this vase is at Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire. The decoration on the Waddesdon vase is extremely similar, though its spiraling decoration twists to the right to complement the left-twisting decoration on the Wrightsman vase. The undersides of both vases are painted with green and gold bands, presumably intended to disguise firing flaws in the base of each. 1983.185.9, its mate at Waddesdon, and two elephant-head vases in the Wallace Collection, London (C246-7) are the only four known examples of the model designated Shape A (without handles) by Savill (p. 161).

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art