Vase

Bronze, gilt-lacquered
11 1/2 in (29.3 cm) x 14 1/2 in (36.8 cm) x 10 in (25.4 cm)
English, circa 1820

The pieces of what was to become known as the Warwick Vase were found in 1771 by the Scottish painter Gavin Hamilton (1730-97) at Pantanello, near Rome. The vase was bought and restored by Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), the British Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary at the Court of Naples. Having failed to persuade the British Museum to buy it, he sold it to his nephew, George Greville, Earl of Warwick.

The Warwick Vase, which is now one of the most widely recognised objects associated with the Grand Tour, was first polularised by the three engravings of it included by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-78) in Vasi, Candelabri, Cipi ... (1778).

Until 1813, the Earl of Warwick refused to allow copies to be made, but in that year he permitted Rundell, Bridge & Rundell to estimate for making a life-size version in silver for Lord Lonsdale; this was never executed. However, the existence of Piranesi's detailed engravings had already led to the manufacture of reductions.

As early as 1807, Thomas Hope published a Warwick Vase in an interior at Duchess Street (Household Furniture, pl. IX). Rundell, Bridge & Rundell (active in this partnership circa 1805-34) are recorded as makers of gilt-bronze objects as well as being famous for a fine array of silver. They were producing Warwick Vases by 1812, when they produced a set of silver-gilt ice-pails of this form for the Prince of Wales. Paul Storr, one of the most important makers for Rundell's, is known to have owned Piranesi engravings and, as it is established that the firm worked in gilt-bronze, it is possible that they were responsible for our vase.

Another relatively early reduction is the bronze vase acquired by the writer and antiquary Sir Walter Scott; it remains at Abbotsford, his home in the Scottish Borders. Like our vase, all the decorative elements are separately cast, chased and applied; this is not the case on later vases which were made in one solid piece.

Reductions of the Warwick Vase were produced as Grand Tour souvenirs during the nineteenth century in italy using a variety of marbles. Examples in silver ere manufactured both in England and America and in porcelain by the Worcester and Rockingham factories.

At the London Great Exhibition, 1851, the Royal Prussian Iron Foundry showed a large iron vase with a gilded interior. The original Warwick Vase, a large, circular, bowl-shaped tribute to Bacchus (part Roman and part eighteenth century restoration), can now be seen in the Burrell Collection, in Glasgow.