MARKED:
Incised rosette factory mark; year mark probably for 1886, and with incised artists’ monograms.

PROVENANCE:
[…]; Harriman Judd collection; Sotheby’s (New York), 22 January 2001, lot 151, bt Johnson; private collection, U.S.A.

The design of this vase reflects the nineteenth century’s fascination with Egyptian motifs, which continued to flourish during the Victorian period. Peacock feathers were a leitmotif of the Aesthetic Movement; the peacock headdress is an adaptation of the familiar Nekhbet vulture headdress and would appear to be a response to this later nineteenth style. Most famously, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) decorated The Peacock Room, designed by Thomas Jeckyll (1827-81), for Frederick Leyland (1832-92); this is now at the Freer Art Gallery, Washington DC.

During the 1970s and ‘80s, Allen Harriman and Edward Judd formed an unsurpassed, and increasingly discriminating, collection of English late nineteenth and early twentieth century pottery; see Peter Rose, ‘A Pioneer Californian collection of English Studio and Art Pottery’, The Decorative Arts Society Journal 24 (2000), pp.98-109. The identification of the artists is taken from Sotheby’s 2001 catalogue.