19th century world fair vases. Who made them?

Most kind

 

Think there may be other volumes out there like this one, where Britain prepared its own mini-catalogue for their Paris exhibitors only. This one is 1855:

https://books.google.com/books?id=e...eAKHTvECSkQ6AEwDnoECAIQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Neat!

 

The site linked to below shows the third volume of the set I have for the London Exhibition, although the volumes in my set have nice period bindings. The chromolithograph illustrations are truly beautiful and make the items almost come to life.

https://archive.org/details/masterpiecesind3wari/page/6

They're very large, books... about 18" tall... so the illustrations are a great size to see detail.

This is one of the images (taken from the website above). The actual illustrations are higher quality than the image, too, with more vibrant color.

 

You must have a beautiful collection of books. That looks gorgeous.

 

these are beautiful pieces John I wonder if they could be Austrian.

 

Thanks, AuDragon.

I do, thanks to the collection I inherited from my mother. She was a textile designer and used illustrations from some of her books for inspiration, plus she delighted in lovely old things. I've almost drooled looking through the books, with lots of "ah"s and "oh wow"s along the way.

I just started a thread asking for some advice since I'd like to start selling some of the books. This thread got me thinking about it again.

 

JMHO.
the expo of 1878 would be the only one that fits. Japonisme was en vogue since 1872 only. BUT I don't buy that family lore, sorry. rings in mouth missing - and the one that is most severe: which merchant would have been paying the fees for exhibiting his items without marks or signatures ?

 

Yep, that's understandable from your point of view.
It may be like one of those similar vases which had the "Made in Japan" labels on the bottom and that came off over the years- I don't know. It also may not have been an actual exhibition model but it's fact that our family were there and it's not all they bought.

Thanks for the leads. My father says he intends to visit some likely manufacturers mentioned by you all as he's retired with a holiday home there, and will enjoy it. It may be a while to come, but I'll remeber to come back to this thread and say what he finds.

Thanks!

 

It would be so great if the Paris expositions were documented at this level of detail, at least the groups for the fine & decorative arts.

In your sample picture, the piece in the middle is decorated with Thorvaldsen's Night:

 

true. seen from France it's not very probable that you'll find the maker.