Pair of Urns
Maker unknown
Date: Late 17th century
Place Made: France
Materials & Techniques: Porphyry
Dimensions: Height 68 cm
Accession Number: Waddesdon Manor 114.1995.1-.2
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Vases like these decorated the grandest of French interiors, including, for example, the Hall of Mirrors in King Louis XIV’s palace of Versailles outside Paris. These vases were not used to put things in, although the covers can be removed and the insides are hollow. Displayed as a pair, their size and symmetry create a sense of grandeur and recall Ancient Roman vases.
Dark red porphyry was quarried in Egypt and was used by the Ancient Egyptians and Romans to make statues and to decorate buildings. The stone’s links with these past civilisations made it seem glamorous and mysterious to later artists and patrons. It is extraordinarily difficult to carve. The smooth bodies of these vases show off the surface of the polished stone. The whitish flecks look like swathes of stars. The handles are in the form of snakes holding on to the rims with their mouths. Enormous skill was required to carve out the areas beneath the bodies of the entwined snakes. The scales of their skin are suggested with shallow lines, quite roughly scratched.
Teachers' Information
Porphyry is an igneous rock and is found is many colours. The most prestigious form is ‘Imperial’ porphyry which is deep red or purple with specks of white or pink feldspar. It was quarried at Mons Igneus (mountain of fire), now Gebel Dokham, in Egypt. It was used by the Egyptians and the Romans and towards the end of the Roman Empire it became particularly associated with the sacred aura of the emperor, whose tomb was made of porphyry. For this reason, porphyry appealed to later European rulers who wished to associate themselves with the authority and grandeur of imperial Rome. In some cases ancient porphyry was reused to decorate buildings – for example, disks sawn from Roman columns decorate the floors of some medieval churches in Rome and the facades of places in Venice. It took centuries for sculptors to discover how the extremely hard stone had been sculpted in antiquity: using abrasives as well as chisels.
Like marble, porphyry can be polished to a gleaming shine.
Activities
1. Look at some of the stone works of art on this website (and buildings and other crafted objects around you) and see if the children can find fossils, crystals and the patterns of the minerals of which the stone is composed.
2. Model or make a vase-shape and experiment with differently shaped handles or covers on the same basic vase-shape. Repeat the same shape in different sizes and then make up sets or ‘garnitures’ of two, three and five vases.
3. Vases were often decorated with plant and animal forms, insects, shells, flowers, reeds and curling branches. Pupils could look at images of vases and then design their own.