# Fonthill Vase > Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province (unidentified workshop) - c. 1300-1340 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/jingdezhen-kilns-yuan/fonthill-vase-national-museum-ireland/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-21 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province (unidentified workshop) - **Date:** c. 1300-1340 - **Medium:** Qingbai porcelain (bluish-white glazed hard-paste porcelain), applied high-relief moulded decoration; formerly fitted with a silver-gilt mount, now lost - **Dimensions:** Height 28 cm - **Object type:** Ceramic - **Period:** Chinese, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) - **Current location:** National Museum of Ireland - Decorative Arts and History, Collins Barracks, Dublin - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A qingbai porcelain vase made at the Jingdezhen kilns in China during the Yuan dynasty, around 1300 to 1340, later fitted in Europe with an elaborate silver-gilt mount that has since been lost. It is widely called the earliest documented Chinese porcelain to reach Europe, on the strength of a story that it was given to Louis the Great of Hungary in 1338; that story does not survive close scrutiny, since Louis did not become king until 1342, and a Hungarian scholar has argued the mount's own inscription names a different, later royal owner entirely.What is solid is the Chinese manufacture, a single 18th-century drawing of the vase in its lost medieval mount, and its documented modern history: owned by the collector William Beckford at Fonthill Abbey, lost from view after his 1822 financial collapse, sold unrecognised and unmounted at the 1882 Hamilton Palace sale for under thirty pounds, and rediscovered as a historically significant object only in 1959, when a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum matched the bare Dublin vase to the 1713 drawing.This record grades the pre-1800 ownership chain as substantially disputed or unverified rather than smoothing it into a single confident narrative, and found no documented connection to the Medici collection despite that claim sometimes circulating alongside this object's story. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1300-c. 1340** Manufactured, Jingdezhen kilns, Jiangxi province `[documented]` (origin) Dated on the basis of the qingbai glaze and body type and the ware's known production window at Jingdezhen before the shift to blue-and-white porcelain. Not disputed in the sources consulted. - **1338** Claimed gift to Louis I ('the Great') of Hungary, via a Chinese/Alan embassy to Pope Benedict XII `[disputed]` (disputed gift) The single most repeated claim about this object. An Avignon embassy from the Great Khan in 1338 is independently documented, but no primary source consulted names this vase as part of it, and Louis did not become King of Hungary until 1342, four years after the date usually given for his receipt of the gift. Treated here as disputed, not as fact. - **1381 (traditional) / early 15th century (Krisztinkovich)** Mounted in silver-gilt and transferred within the Angevin dynastic network, traditionally to Charles III of Naples in 1381; alternatively, per Krisztinkovich's reading of the mount's inscription, made for Queen Joan II of Naples, reigned 1414-1435 `[disputed]` (mounting and transfer) Two incompatible dates and recipients are argued in the sources consulted, resting on rival readings of a single 18th-century drawing of a mount that no longer survives to be re-examined. - **15th century-before 1713** Reportedly the duc de Berry, then Louis the Grand Dauphin, then Francois Lefebvre de Caumartin `[unknown]` (gap, reported but unverified) This chain appears consistently in tertiary sources (chiefly Wikipedia) without a primary document cited. This record could not verify it independently and records it as reported rather than documented. - **1713** Francois Lefebvre de Caumartin `[documented]` (recorded, drawn) Caumartin allowed the antiquarian Roger de Gaignieres to have the mounted vase drawn by Barthelemy Remy. This watercolour survives and is the sole documentary basis for everything known about the medieval mount, its heraldry and its disputed inscription. - **1713-1813** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner documented in this century. - **1813-1822** William Beckford, Fonthill Abbey, Wiltshire `[documented]` (acquisition) In Beckford's collection at Fonthill Abbey by 1813 and listed in guidebooks to the house among its rarest curiosities. The means and seller of Beckford's acquisition are not given in the sources consulted. - **1822-c. 1882** Disputed: either John Farquhar (purchaser of Fonthill Abbey and its contents, 1822) or retained by Beckford and inherited in 1844 by his daughter Susan Euphemia, Duchess of Hamilton `[disputed]` (disputed transfer) Beckford sold Fonthill Abbey and its estate to John Farquhar in 1822 for a reported 330,000 pounds. One secondary source states the vase was sold with the contents and then vanished; a separate biographical source indicates Beckford's daughter inherited what remained of his own collection on his death in 1844, implying he kept the vase out of the 1822 sale. This record could not resolve which account is correct and grades the whole period as disputed rather than choosing one narrative. - **by 1882-1882** Duke of Hamilton, Hamilton Palace, South Lanarkshire `[documented]` (held, unmounted, sold) In the Hamilton Palace collection by 1882, already without its mount. Sold at the Hamilton Palace sale, Christie, Manson and Woods, London, June-July 1882 (a 17-day, five-portion, roughly 2,200-lot sale forced by the 12th Duke of Hamilton's debts), catalogued only as 'a pear-shaped bottle of Chinese celadon porcelain.' - **1882-1959** Dublin Museum of Science and Art (predecessor of the National Museum of Ireland) `[documented]` (purchase, then unrecognised) Purchased at the Hamilton Palace sale by T. M. Whitehead, Keeper of Ceramics, for 28 pounds 7 shillings, and registered simply as 'Old Chinese.' Its earlier documented history went unrecognised for roughly 77 years. The Dublin museum's buying at this sale fits a documented wider pattern: the Department of Science and Art, which administered the Dublin, London and Edinburgh museums, was an active institutional purchaser at the 1882 Hamilton Palace sale. - **1959-1961** National Museum of Ireland; identification published by Arthur Lane, Victoria and Albert Museum `[documented]` (rediscovery) Arthur Lane connected the unmounted Dublin vase with the 1713 Gaignieres drawing and published the reconnected history in the Burlington Magazine in 1961. - **1997-present** National Museum of Ireland - Decorative Arts and History, Collins Barracks, Dublin `[documented]` (current location) Registration DC:1882.3941, on display in the branch's permanent collection. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **1882-06** Christie, Manson and Woods, - Estimate: Not documented in the sources consulted. - Hammer: GBP 28.35 (28 pounds, 7 shillings) - With premium: Not documented; buyer's premiums of the kind now standard were not customary at 19th-century London auctions, so the hammer price is likely the full price paid. - Part of the wider Hamilton Palace sale, a 17-day, roughly 2,200-lot dispersal in five portions. The vase was one lot among thousands and was not treated by the saleroom as a highlight; it was catalogued with an incorrect glaze identification (celadon rather than qingbai) and no reference to its earlier royal history. ## Open questions - By what route, and in whose hands, did the vase move between the Hamilton Palace sale entry point (by 1882) and its last confirmed pre-1822 owner, Francois Lefebvre de Caumartin, roughly two centuries earlier? No primary source consulted documents the duc de Berry, the Grand Dauphin, or Caumartin's own acquisition as anything more than a repeated secondary claim. - Was the vase sold with Fonthill Abbey to John Farquhar in 1822, or did William Beckford retain it among the pieces he kept until his death in 1844, passing it to his daughter Susan, Duchess of Hamilton? The two accounts found in the sources consulted for this record are mutually exclusive and neither is documented by a primary source such as a named sale lot or a probate record. - Is Bela Krisztinkovich's reading of the mount's inscription as JEHANA, and his identification of the intended owner as Joan II of Naples, correct? The mount itself no longer exists to be re-examined; the argument rests entirely on one 18th-century drawing. - Did the vase ever pass through Louis I of Hungary's hands at all, given that he did not become king until 1342, four years after the date usually given for his supposed receipt of it? No primary document placing the vase with Louis has been identified in the sources consulted. - When, precisely, and under what circumstances was the medieval silver-gilt mount lost? One secondary source describes a theft in England without a date; this record could not verify whether the loss occurred before the 1822 Fonthill sale, during Farquhar's or the Hamilton family's ownership, or at some other point. - Is there any documented connection between this vase and the Medici collection in Florence? This record searched specifically for one and found none; the documented (and disputed) chain runs through the Angevin courts of Hungary and Naples and later French royal and noble collections, not through the Medici. Any claim linking this object to the Medici should be treated as unsupported unless a primary source is produced. ## Sources - [1] Arthur Lane, 'The Gaignieres-Fonthill Vase: A Chinese Porcelain of about 1300', Burlington Magazine, vol. 103, no. 696 (1961), pp. 124-32. The article that reconnected the unmounted Dublin vase with its documented earlier history. - [2] Zsombor Jekely, 'A note on the Fonthill Vase', Medieval Hungary blog, 6 December 2010, summarising and citing Bela Krisztinkovich's research (published in Muveszettorteneti Ertesito, 1969) on the mount's date and its disputed JEHANA inscription. - [3] National Museum of Ireland, ''A flukey purchase': the curious story of the Fonthill vase' (museum account of the 1882 acquisition, price and registration). - [4] National Museum of Ireland, Collections Online, object entry (registration DC:1882.3941): dimensions, materials, date and summary provenance. - [5] National Museum of Ireland, 'The Fonthill Vase', Decorative Arts and History / Resilience collection feature. - [6] Robert Hunter (ed.), 'A History of Chinese Export Porcelain in Ten Objects', Ceramics in America 2014, Chipstone Foundation. Tertiary synthesis piece; flagged for replacement with a specialist Yuan-porcelain catalogue entry where one becomes available. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Fonthill Vase'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with Lane 1961 and the Jekely/Krisztinkovich material directly. - [8] Wikipedia, 'Qingbai ware'. Tertiary source, used only for general technical background on manufacture; flagged for replacement with a specialist ceramics reference. - [9] National Trust for Scotland, 'Susan, Duchess of Hamilton (1786-1859)', on Susan Euphemia Beckford's marriage to the 10th Duke of Hamilton and her 1844 inheritance from her father William Beckford. - [10] Country Life, 'The 5 sales which made Christie's - No. 3: The Hamilton Palace sale', on the scale, dates and cause of the 1882 Hamilton Palace sale. - [11] Christopher Maxwell, ''Spurious Articles': the purchases of the Department of Science and Art from the Hamilton Palace sale of 1882', Journal of the History of Collections, vol. 28, no. 1 (2016), pp. 109-. Abstract only consulted; establishes that the Department of Science and Art, which administered the Dublin museum, was an active institutional buyer at the 1882 sale generally. Does not confirm this vase by name in the portion accessible to this record. - [12] Wikimedia Commons, file metadata (extmetadata/LicenseShortName) for the three files used in this record, verified per file via the Commons API. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.