# Potpourri Vase (Vase potpourri a vaisseau) > Sevres Porcelain Manufactory (form designed by Jean-Claude Duplessis le Pere; painted decoration by Jean-Louis Morin) - 1764 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/sevres-porcelain-manufactory/sevres-vaisseau-a-mat-walters/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-19 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Sevres Porcelain Manufactory (form designed by Jean-Claude Duplessis le Pere; painted decoration by Jean-Louis Morin) - **Date:** 1764 - **Medium:** Soft-paste porcelain (pate tendre), polychrome enamels, and gilding; replacement stand of carved and gilt wood - **Dimensions:** Overall with stand: H 45.2 x W 35 x D 17.3 cm (17 13/16 x 13 3/4 x 6 13/16 in). Vase alone, without the later stand: H approximately 38.9 cm (15 5/16 in). - **Object type:** Ceramic - **Period:** French, Louis XV, 1764 - **Current location:** The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A ship modeled entirely in soft-paste porcelain, complete with rigging, portholes and a pierced pennant, made at Sevres in 1764 to a form Jean-Claude Duplessis le Pere had designed seven years earlier. Only about twelve examples were ever produced and only ten are known to survive; this is the one now in Baltimore, and the only one of the ten that the curator who has personally examined the other nine has not yet seen in the porcelain.Its documented history runs from an English Rothschild collection through two Paris and New York dealers to Henry Walters, who bought it in 1928 and left it, with the rest of his museum, to the City of Baltimore on his death in 1931. The Walters Art Museum's own provenance note leaves the Rothschild acquisition itself undated and unexplained, which this record preserves as a gap rather than closing it with a guess.The form is documented, priced by its own difficulty, and imitated by name since the nineteenth century, yet this specific vase has not been the subject of a single further recorded transaction in ninety-eight years. That is itself a market history, and it is recorded here as one. ## 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. - **1764** Sevres Porcelain Manufactory `[documented]` (manufacture) Made at Sevres in 1764, the factory's marks (interlaced Ls, date letter L, painter's mark M for Jean-Louis Morin) establishing both manufacturer and date without reliance on connoisseurship. - **undated** Sir Anthony Nathan de Rothschild, 1st Baronet (1810-1876) `[documented]` (ownership, date and mode of acquisition unrecorded) Named as an owner in the Walters Art Museum's own published provenance, which explicitly flags the date and mode of his acquisition as unknown. Sir Anthony was of the English Rothschild banking branch, a director of N M Rothschild and Sons and owner of Aston Clinton House, Buckinghamshire, where he assembled a broader collection of paintings and decorative arts including rare French faience. He is not the same Rothschild connected to the Louvre's own, different vaisseau a mat, which passed through Baron Alphonse de Rothschild of the French branch. - **-1927** Edwin Marriott Hodgkins (1860-1932), Paris `[documented]` (dealer stock, by 1927; date and mode of acquisition from the Rothschild collection unrecorded) Hodgkins was a specialist Old Sevres Porcelain dealer, trading from Old and then New Bond Street, London, from about 1897 to 1920, publishing a catalogue of his own Sevres collection in 1910, before relocating his business to Paris around 1920 and operating from 3 Rue de Berri by 1928. His personal Sevres holdings passed substantially into the Walters Art Museum's collection over time. - **1927-1928** A. Seligmann, Rey and Co., New York `[documented]` (dealer stock, by 1928) The New York branch, established 1921, of Arnold Seligmann and Cie., Place Vendome, Paris. Arnold Seligmann was the younger brother and former partner of Jacques Seligmann, the leading Paris dealer in French eighteenth-century decorative arts until his death in 1923; the brothers' firms split after a 1912 dispute. Henry Walters bought at least one other Sevres piece from this same firm in 1928. - **1928-1931** Henry Walters, Baltimore `[documented]` (purchase) Purchased by Henry Walters in 1928 from A. Seligmann, Rey and Co. No price is recorded in the sources consulted. This purchase fits Walters's documented pattern of concentrated buying from the Seligmann dealer network in the 1920s. - **1931-present** The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore `[documented]` (bequest) Henry Walters died 30 November 1931, bequeathing his entire collection and museum building to the City of Baltimore; the vase entered the Walters Art Museum's collection at that point and has remained there since, accession number 48.559. ## Open questions - What was the date and mode of Sir Anthony Nathan de Rothschild's acquisition of the vase? The Walters Art Museum's own provenance note leaves this unrecorded. - What price did Henry Walters pay in 1928, whether to Hodgkins, to A. Seligmann, Rey and Co., or in total? No figure was found in the sources consulted. - Does the Walters Art Museum's own record classify this vase by size (first, second or third grandeur) anywhere in its internal files, beyond what is stated on its public object page, which gives no size class? - Was this specific vase part of a documented royal or court commission, or made for open sale on the factory's ordinary trade floor? The factory's own sales ledgers for 1764 were not examined for this record. - What became of the roughly two examples of the twelve produced between 1757 and 1764 that are not among the ten known survivors? No documentary trace of their fate was found. - Has any of the ten surviving vaisseaux a mat, including this one, been the subject of a documented private-treaty sale or valuation since entering its present institution? No such transaction was found in the sources consulted. - What is the conservation and condition history of this specific vase since 1931? No conservation record was found in the sources consulted, beyond the fact that its stand is a later replacement. ## Sources - [1] The Walters Art Museum, object record for Potpourri Vase (Vase potpourri a vaisseau), accession 48.559, Sevres Porcelain Manufactory, form by Jean-Claude Duplessis le Pere, decoration by Jean-Louis Morin, 1764, acquired by Henry Walters 1928. - [2] Wikipedia, 'Sevres pot-pourri vase in the shape of a ship'. Tertiary source, consolidating catalogue data from multiple institutions; flagged for replacement with Sassoon, Vincennes and Sevres Porcelain: Catalogue of the Collections (Getty, 1992) and Eriksen, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor: Sevres Porcelain (1968), both cited by the article itself. - [3] Sevres - Cite de la Ceramique (the Sevres manufactory's own institutional site), 'Le Vaisseau a mat'. - [4] The Frick Collection, object record for Pot-pourri a Vaisseau, accession 1916.9.07 (object page 572). - [5] Musee du Louvre, Collections online, 'Pot-pourri a vaisseau', OA 10965. - [6] Royal Collection Trust, 'Pot-pourri vase and cover (pot-pourri a vaisseau or pot-pourri en navire)', RCIN 2360. - [7] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'Potpourri vase (pot-pourri a vaisseau)', accession 58.75.89a, b. - [8] The J. Paul Getty Museum, 'Lidded Pot-pourri Vase (vase or pot-pourri vaisseau a mat, deuxieme grandeur)'. - [9] Wallace Collection Online, potpourri vase 'pot pourri a vaisseau' (of the first size), object C256. Accessed via indexed search excerpt; the museum's own object-detail page could not be directly retrieved during this research and should be consulted directly to verify. - [10] University of Leeds, Antique Trade Directory, dealership record for Edwin Marriot Hodgkins. - [11] The Rothschild Archive, family history, 'Anthony Nathan (Billy) de Rothschild (1810-1876)'. - [12] Wikipedia, 'Sir Anthony de Rothschild, 1st Baronet'. Tertiary source, used only for biographical detail (Aston Clinton, High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, collecting interests) consistent with the Rothschild Archive's own account; flagged for replacement with a published Rothschild family biography. - [13] Dumbarton Oaks, Bliss-Tyler correspondence, annotation for 'Arnold Seligmann, Rey and Co.'. - [14] Encyclopedia of Design, 'Introduction to Emile Samson and the Legacy of Samson Ceramics'. - [15] Bonhams, auction lot record, 'A remarkable Minton Vaisseau a mat ship vase and cover, circa 1895'. - [16] The Walters Art Museum, object record for Sevres Eared Vase, accession 48.611, acquired by Henry Walters 1928 from A. Seligmann, Rey and Co., used here to corroborate the dealer relationship and the 1928 buying pattern. - [17] Wikipedia, 'Henry Walters'. Tertiary source, used only for general biographical and institutional facts (father William T. Walters, the 1900-1909 Mount Vernon building, the 1931 bequest, the 1933 incorporation and 1934 public opening) that are widely and consistently reported; flagged for replacement with the Walters Art Museum's own institutional history page. --- 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.