i

THE WARWICK VASE AND BRITISH NOSTALGIA

______

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of the Department

of Art History

University of Houston

______

In Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Art of Art History

______

By

Casey Kane Monahan

May, 2014

ii

THE WARWICK VASE AND BRITISH NOSTALGIA

______Casey Kane Monahan

APPROVED:

______Rex Koontz, Ph.D. Committee Chair

______Rodney Nevitt, Ph.D.

______Luisa Orto, Ph.D.

______John W. Roberts, Ph.D. Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Department of English

iii

THE WARWICK VASE AND BRITISH NOSTALGIA

______

An Abstract of a Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of the Department

of Art History

University of Houston

______

In Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts of Art History

______

By

Casey Kane Monahan

May 2014

iv

Abstract

After The Warwick Vase’s “creation” between 1771 and 1774, the form of the ancient-

Neoclassical hybrid object was highly replicated in the decorative arts throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In particular, the British population demanded the form used in both shape and decoration to create an entire class of objects including, but not limited to, presentation vases, trophy cups, garden pots, as well as tea and dinner services. Why did this fantasy object invade the English domestic sphere? I intend to argue that the presence of art objects referencing The Warwick Vase in the homes of the British elite were a visual symbol of nostalgia for the upper class’s earlier dominance, in a time when their power and status was in decline.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: The Regency and the Vase 16

Chapter 2: Empire and Turmoil: 1840-1890 37

Chapter 3: Edwardians and Nostalgia 48

Conclusion 58

Appendix 66

Bibliography 76 Monahan 1

Introduction

“‘...had the Emperor Bonaparte been successful in conquering England…the first note in his pocket-book was to possess himself of the marble vase at Warwick.’”1 What was this object that the determined and fabled French Emperor lusted after? A grand, marble construction, part-ancient, part-modern, fabricated into the form of a vase designed by the great Giovanni Battista Piranesi, known as the Warwick Vase.

The Warwick Vase (figure 1) is comprised of six sections: bowl, stem, base, and three-part pedestal. The Carrara marble object is quite large, weighing eight and a quarter tons, and standing 2.94 meters tall.2 The bowl of the vase features bacchanalian imagery; on one side, a head depicting Bacchus, one of Silenus, a companion god, wearing a crown made from a grape vine and grapes. The relief also includes two heads depicting followers of Bacchus: one is a head with a wreath of ivy and berries, the other is a head with leaves and pinecones. Additionally, a thyrsus and pedum appear, signifying fertility and traditionally associated with Pan, both of which are related to

Bacchus. The other side looks remarkably similar, but upon closer inspection the middle figures are not identical; instead, Ariadne and Bacchus take center stage. Both sides feature a lion pelt, which is also imagery associated with Bacchus. The vase also features large vine-stem handles with bunches of grapes hanging down. 3 The four sided pedestal features a square base with an inscription referencing its restoration. Very little of this is

1 David Udy, quoted in “Piranesi’s ‘Vasi’, The English Silversmith and His Patrons,” The Burlington 2 Richard Marks and Brian JR Blench, The Warwick Vase (Glasgow: Civic Press, 1979), 9. 3 Ibid, 9-13. Monahan 2 original: most of the piece dates to the eighteenth century.

Beginning in the sixteenth century, and reaching an apex in the mid-eighteenth century, Europeans, and in particular, the British,4 were infatuated with the study of the ancient world and the objects that remained from it. In the eighteenth century,

“antiquities were hunted, excavated, purchased, collected, viewed, studied, and also, particularly in Rome, copied and restored.”5 Driven by this exhaustive relationship with the ancient world, antiquarian societies sprung up in Europe; in particular, the British interest in the study of the ancient became more and more popular over the course of the eighteenth-century.6 There was a unique relationship between the British and the Italians in the period, and the cultural exchange that existed: “for the British, Rome was the present as well as the past, the slippage between them being continuous.”7 The British were able to appropriate the ruins as their own: “Rome, ancient and papal, provided both positive and negative models for the construction of national identity based on a cosmopolitan, imperial and spiritually universalizing model.”8 Figures from the past, such as Cicero, were important in terms of elitism and political rhetoric: “familiarity with

Ciceronian legal arguments and bon mots was essential for success in the public sphere, above all in Parliament.”9 Much of this knowledge was derived from a particularly

4 Ilaria Bignamini and Clare Hornsby, Digging and Dealing in Eighteenth-Century Rome, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, 2. 5 Ilaria Bignamini, “Antiquaries and antiquarian societies,” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T003248 (accessed September 30, 2013). 6 Ibid. 7 David R. Marshall and Karin Wolfe, “Roma Britannica,” in Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Rome, ed. David R. Marshall, Susan Russell, and Karin Wolfe (London: The British School at Rome, 2011), 5. 8 Christopher M.S. Johns, “Visual Culture and the Triumph of Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-century Rome,” in Roma Britannica, 14. 9 Johns, “Visual Culture and the Triumph of Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-century Rome,” in Roma Britannica, 15. Monahan 3

British institution, the Grand Tour.10

The Grand Tour, which was popular among the British elite, was a way for noble gentlemen to explore the world.11 According to one of the many guidebooks written for young men making journeys across the continent, the Grand Tour instilled “nobler ideas, more moral virtue…he shall be a more ingenious and a better man.”12 In particular, “the

British sought yet more passionately the sources of that broader Classical culture in which they had been steeped, and whose glories they sought to recreate.”13 The Grand

Tour’s popularity only increased as Britain conquered lands in the first half of the eighteenth century14: the relationship and lineage with the ancient Roman past became associated with successful conquering and the glory of a nation on top. There was an

“unspoken, but none the less firmly-held, belief, the Britons, not Italians, were the truer and more worthy successors to the grandeur that was Rome.”15 As British gentlemen spent time in Italy, they were really spending time with what they believed to be their empire’s grand past. Many of these men returned to the home nation as antiquarians, well versed in the rhetoric of the ancient world for the purpose of the modern empire.

There was a “genuine admiration for antique statuary and the fervent desire to build collections of it for both domestic pleasure and public edification.”16

Piranesi was one of the most prominent figures in this eighteenth century world of antiquarianism; an artist who famously etched both capricci scenes inspired by ancient

10 Ibid. 11John Reeve, “Grand Tour,” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com: 80/subscriber/article/gorve/art/T034048 (accessed September 30, 2013). 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Christopher M.S. Johns, “Visual Culture and the Triumph of Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-century Rome” in Roma Britannica, 14. 15 Ibid, 14-15. 16 Ibid, 18. Monahan 4 objects as well as actual Roman architectural elements and ruins. Piranesi’s “workshop was a centre for the production of artefacts in the classical architectural vocabulary.”17

Key is the concept of “production”: “Piranesi was ‘Cavalier Pasticci’, whose creations were to be found in many great house in Europe, but creations they were, not ancient sculptures carefully or thoughtfully - even if erroneously - restored,”18 much like his capricci. Piranesi published Vasi, candelabra…ed antichi in 1778, which was widely disseminated to the European public in the period, and in particular, many of the plates of the volume were dedicated to the British patrons.19 The text features drawings of notable ancient objects, but also includes drawings of vases that Piranesi himself “created,” with various fragments he excavated.20

One of these composite objects, designed by Piranesi, is the Warwick Vase (figure

2). The fantasy object was created using a group of 24 ancient fragments found by the

Scottish painter, and self-described “cavatore (digger) and a negoziante (dealer),”21

Gavin Hamilton at “Pantanello, on the northern boundary of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli.”22

The property that the fragments were discovered on is considered one was “granted the license for excavations in 1769, a year in which some historians believe “marks the real beginning of the British conquest”23 of Italy’s ruins. At the time, Gavin Hamilton was working with Piranesi on the dissemination of the antiquities. Piranesi seems to have taken the fragments and subsequently sold them, and the design for the Warwick Vase, to

17 Bignamini and Hornsby, Digging and Dealing, 318. 18 Ibid, 319. 19 Thorsten Opper, “Glory of Rome restored,” The British Museum Magazine (2005): 29. 20 Udy, “Piranesi’s ‘Vasi’, The English Silversmith and His Patrons,”830. 21 Bignamini and Hornsby, Digging and Dealing, 10. 22 Bent Sørensen, “Piranesi, Grandjacquet and the Warwick Vase,” The Burlington Magazine 145, no. 1208, Art in Italy (November 2003): 792. 23 Bignamini and Hornsby, Digging and Dealing, 9. Monahan 5 the British envoy to the court of Naples, Sir William Hamilton.24 It is unknown as to what the actual function of the original fragments were, but we can assume a kind of vessel due to the portion that was part of a vase. Piranesi likely supervised the

“restoration” of the object25 and the work itself was probably carried out by Bartolomeo

Cavaceppi, who did similar restorations for Piranesi and other antiquities dealers, in the period.26 The restoration was extensive: “a very large piece of Carrara marble was hollowed out and cut into the shape of an ancient vase, guided by the shape of the fragments. The fragments were then inserted into the appropriate places, at a total cost of approximately £300.”27 Piranesi and Cavaceppi probably turned to other ancient vases for popular motifs and general form in order to “restore” The Warwick Vase.28

As a contemporary of Piranesi, Charles Heathcote Tatham noted, reflects “the singular fertility of his inventive powers;” despite this perceived reinvention of antiquity, this was an acceptable way to deal with ancient objects in the period.29 “That Piranesi may have wished his objects - vases, candelabra, etc. - to pass as original pieces (‘sagro santo antico’); many other sculptor-restorers did the same; the difference lies in the pieces he made were fantastically decorative and he did not restrain his own invention in their design.”30 Subsequently, this makes the Warwick Vase, not an actual ancient object, but a replica of one, a fantasy creation of what an eighteenth century figure believed an ancient vase would look like. Piranesi’s “personal mission to highlight the genius of

24 Opper, “Glory of Rome restored,” 29. 25 “The Warwick Vase,” The Burlington Magazine 121, no. 912 (1979): 141. 26 Joanna Matthews,“Four Nineteenth Century Garden Ornaments,” Garden History 33, no. 2 (Autumn, 2005): 279. 27 Matthews, “Four Nineteenth Century Garden Ornaments,” 279. 28 Udy, “Piranesi’s ‘Vasi’, The English Silversmith and His Patrons,” 830. 29 Ibid, 820. 30 Bignamini and Hornsby, Digging and Dealing, 319. Monahan 6

Rome was best expressed in his printed volumes,”31 and the Warwick Vase does just that.

Sir William Hamilton was an avid collector and connoisseur of vases and other antiquities, boasting a collection that he “considered far superior to that in the British

Museum.”32 Included on the Warwick Vase is an inscription, documenting the vase:

Sir William Hamilton, ambassador from King George III of Great Britain to King Ferdinand IV of the Sicilies, had this monument of ancient art and Roman majesty, which was excavated among the ruins of the Tiburtine villa - delightful home of the emperor Hadrian Augustus - restore, and having sent it to his country, dedicated it to the native genius of fine arts 1774.33

Collecting and connoisseurship of vases was important in the period, for “vases and other excavated artifacts were seen as the best, most direct documents with which to reconstruct the daily life of antiquity. The intense study and discussion of vases - the need to explain, order, and catalogue them - indicate not only the eighteenth century’s general fascination with taxonomy but its passionate connection and identification with the ancients.”34 Sir Hamilton was an influential collector and connoisseur,35 and importantly published images of his collection with Pierre d’Hancarville.36 The resulting Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities (1766) “was a highly influential decorative source for craftsmen.”37

The Warwick Vase, with its ancient fragments and “reconstruction” embodies the

31 Ibid. 32 Ian Jenkins and Kim Sloan, Vases & Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection (London: British Museum Press, 1996), 53. 33 Katherine Danalakis, “The Warwick Vase,” in Vasemania, ed. Stefanie Walker (New Haven: Yale University Press), 33. 34 Stefanie Walker, “The Hamilton Collection and Its Influence” in Vasemania, 31. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Christine Gervais, “Pair of Corner Cabinets,” in Rienzi: European Decorative Arts and Paintings ed. Katherine S. Howe (London: Scala Publishers Ltd. and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2008), 92. Monahan 7 eighteenth century Neoclassical spirit, which “satisfied nostalgia for a golden age and gave reassurance of continuity with an imagined past.”38 While today’s viewers likely believe that the Warwick Vase “demonstrates how anachronistic the modern concept of ignorant clients acquiring ‘faked’ antiquities must be”39 it instead demonstrates how antiquities were thought about in the period. Regardless of whether or not the modern viewer sees it as a fake, the fantasy object caused a frenzy, and from the very beginning, the Warwick Vase caused a resonance with society’s elite: it is in the early nineteenth- century where Gentleman’s Magazine published an article about it, and in the same time period we learn about Napoleon’s desire for the vase, “according to Baron Denon.”40

With such demand, it was only a matter of time before reproductions would exist.

In the late 1770s Sir William was attempting to sell off his collection41 and sought buyers of the highest order for the Warwick Vase. In late 1775, Charles Greville, the nephew of Sir William who acted as his agent in London, wrote to say that the British

Museum would not purchase the vase.42 “Hamilton was asking £500 for the Vase,” 30-

40,000 today43, “which was too much for the Museum to contemplate spending on an ancient marble at a time when books, manuscripts and specimens of natural history took precedence.”44 In early 1776, Sir William suggested in a letter to Grenville that while the

Pope was willing to pay more for the Warwick Vase, his desire was for it to be in the

38 David Raizman,“Entrepreneurial Efforts in Britain and Elsewhere” in History of Modern Design, Second Edition (Uppersaddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2011), 35. 39 Opper, “Glory of Rome restored,” 39. 40 Udy, quoted in “Piranesi’s ‘Vasi’, The English Silversmith and His Patrons,” 830. 41 Ian Jenkins and Kim Sloan, Vases & Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection (London: British Museum Press: 1996), 53. 42 Jenkins and Sloan, Vases & Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection, 53. 43 British National Archives Currency converter. Accessed March 31, 2014. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/default.asp#mid 44 Jenkins and Sloan, Vases & Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection, 53. Monahan 8

British Museum. The British Museum never bent to Sir William’s desires and Charles

Greville’s brother, the Earl of Warwick, acquired the Warwick Vase. The Earl moved the

Warwick Vase to his residence, Warwick Castle. Initially, the vase was protected by a tent and then, in 1788, the vase was installed in a greenhouse built by William Eboral and

William Mason.45

Interestingly, The Earl of Warwick refused to allow for copies to be made of the actual vase until 1813.46 Why would such an object be removed from public view, especially when Sir William Hamilton had pushed for it to be in the collection of the

British Museum? However, this did not mean that copies did not exist before 1813, as

Piranesi had published his design for its reconstruction in Vasi; the prominent silver firm

Rundell, Bridge, and Rundell and the silversmith of the nobility, Paul Storr, used the published design in their work. 47 The earliest replicas date to 1811, when the preeminent

British tastemaker in the early nineteenth-century, the Prince of Wales, who was to become Prince Regent, and eventually, King George IV, commissioned what are

“probably the earliest replicas of the Warwick Vase in any material.”48

While the Prince Regent may have made the first commissions for replicas of the

Warwick Vase, he was by no means the only one. The Warwick Vase was prolifically copied from the early years of the nineteenth century well into the twentieth century. The copies exist in assorted shapes, sizes, materials, and functions. Some vases replicate the iconography of the Warwick Vase identically, while others take liberties by retaining only some iconography, and still others remove all but the shape and distinct handles while

45 Marks and Blench, The Warwick Vase), 8. 46 “The Warwick Vase,” The Burlington Magazine, 141. 47 Udy, “Piranesi’s ‘Vasi’, The English Silversmith and His Patrons,” 830. 48 Ibid. Monahan 9 incorporating new designs. Why did these objects permeate the world of decorative arts?

While copies of the vase were created in America, France, and Italy, the vast majority of these were made in England, specifically for the British market.

The rhetoric of decorative arts leads each of these thousands of objects to be treated as a singular form. The vast majority of these object descriptions focus on three items. The first is the history of the original Warwick Vase. Terms such as “model of the

Warwick Vase,”49 or “copy of the Warwick Vase,”50 are used to identify many of the replicas. Additionally, the majority also reference information about the Warwick Vase, noting Gavin Hamilton and Piranesi’s original object.51 An example of a standard description of Warwick Vase copies is as follows:

The present vase is modelled on the antique Roman stone original excavated near Tivoli in 1771 and now in The Burrell Collection, Glasgow. Acquired in the 18th century by the Earl of Warwick from whom it takes its name, the vase became very popular as an antique form and was copied in silver, bronze, marble and by a variety of porcelain manufacturers.52

Interestingly, this description is for Pair of Derby Imari ‘Warwick’ Vases (figure 3), from circa 1820, which are a set of porcelain vases that do not even retain the iconography of the original vase. Rather, the vases use the shape of the bowl, the twisted vine-like handles, and a few of the hanging grapes that accent the rim of the bowl. The primary decoration is an Imari design, inspired by Japanese imports, featuring blue, red, and white hues in a decorative design popular in the British market during this period of

49 Christie’s “A Gilt and Lacquered Bronze Model of the Warwick Vase,” www.christies.com/lotfinder/ LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intoObjectID=5707036 (accessed September 22, 2013). 50 Christie’s, “A Silvered Bronze Copy of the Warwick Vase,” www.christies.com/lotfinder/ LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=5701268 (accessed September 22, 2013). 51 Katherine S. Howe, “Pair of Wine Coolers,” in Rienzi: European Decorative Arts and Paintings,103. 52 Christie’s, “A Pair of Derby Imari ‘Warwick’Vases,” http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/ LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=4047923 (accessed September 23, 2013). Monahan 10 transatlantic trade.

Secondly, the descriptions of the objects, particularly for the replicas and copies made in the early nineteenth century, often refer to the maker of the replicas of the

Warwick Vase. The emphasis on the artist or craftsman himself rather than his work allows for the artist’s biography to be a key mode of interpretation: the object is important because of who made it. One of the most important makers is Paul Storr, a silversmith who was employed at the firm Rundell, Bridge & Rundell and also worked as an independent craftsman. When a Warwick Vase is known to be one produced by Storr, it automatically receives more attention than other copies, and the focus of the object’s history is then related to Storr, not the historical class of objects it is part of. In fact, some art historians believe that Storr made replicas of the Warwick Vase that “have reason to be the standard against which other metal replicas of the Warwick vase are measured”53 and that the firm’s “copies…attracted considerable fame and…continued to exert considerable influence in decorative art long after the firm closed.”54 Yet, is it really the Storr copies or is it their membership in a class of objects, the replicas of the

Warwick Vase, which caused the form “to exert considerable influence in decorative art long after”?

A third focus in much of the literature about the copies of the Warwick Vase is the provenances, specifically the original patronage, of the objects. In many descriptions of copies, emphasis is put on who commissioned the works at hand. For example, there is quite a bit written about a pair of 1812 wine coolers in the shape of the Warwick Vase

53 Howe, “Pair of Wine Coolers,” in Rienzi, 103. 54Christopher Hartop, Royal Goldsmiths: The Art of Rundell & Bridge, 1797-1843, (Cambridge: John Adamson for Koopman Rare Art, 2005), 177. Monahan 11 made for the Prince Regent and his desire for these replicas.55 Additionally, many descriptions focus on noble provenance. The conclusion that this stress on provenance draws is that is that the vases are important because of whom they were made for, how that individual commissioned them, and not necessarily how they fit into a series of objects that look identical or similar to it.

The literature on the copies of the Warwick Vase demonstrates that the form was popular but offers no real reason for its celebrity. For example, The Burrell Collection’s book The Warwick Vase (1979), features a section dedicated to “The Copies.” A meager four and a half pages of text are devoted to copies. The authors note the fact that various copies were made, and replicated in multiple media, and specifically identifies few out of the many iterations,56 but its authors never speculate why, beyond a taste for the ancient and the prominence of the Neoclassical.57 The 2004 exhibition catalogue for Vasemania:

Neoclassical Form and Ornament in Europe: Selections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art makes mention of the original Warwick Vase in the section “The Hamilton

Collection and Its Influence.” However, much like its predecessors, Vasemania emphasizes the importance of the Hamilton Collection and the plates designed from

Piranesi, noting the design of the work rather than the multitude of copies.

Reproductions of the form are briefly mentioned at the end of the entry, noting that “the form of the Warwick Vase became popular for silver sporting trophies,”58 and ending its discussion of the form.

It can be speculated that while so much literature is devoted to the original object,

55 Hartop, Royal Goldsmiths, 177. 56 Marks & Blench, The Warwick Vase, 22. 57 Ibid, 20. 58 Danalakis, “The Warwick Vase,” in “The Hamilton Collection and Its Influence,” in Vasemania, 34. Monahan 12 it is likely that at this point in time, one has become familiar with the form and iconography of the Warwick Vase through a copy or replica of it. The Neoclassical style and Enlightenment atmosphere of the late eighteenth century seems like a very plausible reason for copies to exist, even if they are only explicative of the aesthetic taste in the period. Copying vases of the ancient design was common: “ancient models not only inspired the forms and ornamentation of eighteenth-century vessels”59 but also “provided contemporary European designers with a repertory of models for their work.” While the provenance directing itself to royal commissions could account for its popularity in the

Regency, this hypothesis does not account for the multitude of Warwick Vase replicas that appeared in England after George IV’s lifetime, well into the twentieth century.

Intriguingly, even though the British Museum was not interested in acquiring the

Warwick Vase, the vase itself and its copies seemingly still took on significance with

British society. Why did the form of the Warwick Vase cause a resonance with British society? We do know from Thorsten Opper’s brief 2005 article in the British Museum

Magazine that many of the “plates in Vasi e Candelabri were dedicated to past or prospective clients. Over 50 of them were British, indicating their pre-eminence in the antiquities market,”60 and thus the extensive exposure of elite British society to images of the Warwick Vase. Opper’s text investigates the Warwick Vase, indicating its celebrity in the late eighteenth century,61 but still does not theorize why the vase was replicated for such an extensive period of time.

By treating the copies of the Warwick Vase as a class of objects, rather than on an

59 Hans Ottomeryer, “The Metamorphosis of the Neoclassical Vase,” in Vasemania, 15. 60 Opper, “Glory of Rome Restored,” 39. 61 Ibid. Monahan 13 object-by-object basis, patterns can potentially be found through which to evaluate said class of objects. For example, using provenance research we can trace who purchased some of the vases, and what social strata they belong to, determining whether or not it was popular with all of British society or a select few. Was there something happening in society to the group or groups that could be related to the want of the image?

Additionally, it is important that aspects of economics in the periods in which the vases appear are recognized, as often the trend of a particular period can demonstrate a reason for something’s popularity. Perhaps through the investigation of these aspects we can hypothesize the reason for the prolific nature of the form of the Warwick Vase in English decorative arts.

Attention and distinction must also be drawn to actual replicas, whatever the size may be, of the Warwick Vase, objects that utilize the shape of the vase, but completely disregard the iconography, as well as to items that use a representation of the vase, but are not a vase. Many of the original copies of the vase are scaled down versions, but as time progressed, adaptations are made. All of these “types” of Warwick Vases are important, and the decisions that were made to include the iconography or not by the craftsmen and designers are important, and perhaps can tell us more about why the form was used and what it was trying to express.

Through a study of the class of objects – all forms of the Warwick Vase– and through the lens of classical theory - we can suggest that the objects were wholly a

British desire and invention, and a means for the elite males in society to appropriate the grandeur of Rome’s past for the British Empire’s well into the twentieth century. They Monahan 14 appropriate Rome as a whole in the eighteenth century,62 but the use of one particular object for hundreds of years demonstrates that the form of the Warwick Vase was the tangible object that carried that past and glory into the future. The replicas, placed in the home, and at some elite institutions, served as a tangible reminder of the glory of the

British Empire, in a world where the Empire was slowly beginning to crumble. The bulk of these objects were clearly meant for display and often that was their sole function. In the form of presentation pieces, greatly reduced from the size of the original, replicas of the Warwick Vase graced sideboards and tables, made of sumptuous materials suitable for display. This placement makes them made for the eyes only of those in the home, and likely those of only an elevated social stature. The larger, closer to scale replicas, while seemingly democratizing in material and placement, still retain a sense of elitism: they echoed the imperial aesthetic programs thus were reflective of class structure, exclusivity, and superiority.

62 Christopher M.A. Johns, “Visual Culture and the Triumph of Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-century Rome, in Roma Britannica, 14. Monahan 15

Chapter 1: The Regency and the Vase “…beneath the surface glitter of Regency life…was an underlying malaise…”63

Interestingly, and notably, Lord Warwick refused to allow anyone to make direct copies of the Warwick Vase, beyond Piranesi’s drawings, until 1813. Instead, the vase remained hidden from public view, while the public, aware of Piranesi’s drawings, was clamoring for access. It was during this period, the early nineteenth century, that replicas begin appearing in object form, even before Lord Warwick allowed for direct copies of the vases. It is noteworthy that these objects begin appearing at this time, as it is a period in which the first signs of the decline of the British Empire appear, and the end of the long eighteenth century. Interestingly, the bulk of these vases are silver, and while still using classical inspiration, the designs become “heavier and more expensive.”64 Perhaps this turn away from cleaner, lighter classical designs65 is significant in that their scale is defensive and imposing as trouble brews in the empire.

More importantly for The Warwick Vase is that society in England during the period between 1810 and 1820 is noted for being glamorous, lavish, and relatively economically prosperous, but also full of highly volatile political and social undercurrents. As Carolly Erickson notes in her book, originally published in 1986 and republished in 2011, Our Tempestuous Day: A History of Regency England: “ beneath the surface glitter of Regency life – the opulent interiors, the elegant dress, the grand, scenic

63 Carolly Erickson, Our Tempestuous Day: A History of Regency England, (New York: Harper, 2011), 8. 64 James Yorke, “Regency and Empire” in Silver: History and Design edited by Philippa Glanville (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1996), 50- 51. 65 Ibid, 50. Monahan 16 architecture – was an underlying malaise, a pervasive emptiness and sense of loss that afflicted a wide spectrum of the populace.”66 What exactly caused this malaise? In the late eighteenth century, the British effectively lost the American War of Independence.

This was the start of a series of issues that plagued British Society. In late 1810, King

George III fell ill with a mysterious ailment affecting his mental state. In February of

1811, with the King unable to govern, the Prince of Wales, George of Hanover, was made Regent.67 While he “had a capacity for kingliness, “ the Regent could not hope to match this [George III’s] level of omnicompetence…where his father has been habitually conscientious, the Regent was hopelessly self-indulgent, so that despite his good intentions he overslept, missed appointments and often kept his ministers waiting for hours.” The public’s uncertainty in their government’s leadership ability easily had an effect on the nation’s morale.

Additionally, there were other issues at hand. As Erickson notes, with the rise of industrial manufacturing, violent demonstrations took place. In 1811 and 1812, Luddite violence terrorized the country. Laborers were protesting against the rise of machinery that was replacing traditional framework knitting.68 “During the course of war with

France and consequent trade restrictions the demand for stockings had fluctuated alarmingly, with a few boom years and many more depressed ones. Wages had gone steadily down, and many more workers’ hours were cut by half or more. Beyond this, the value of their labor was debased when hosiers shifted from producing elaborate designs- which required considerable skill to make- to turning out mostly plain stockings, for

66 Erickson, Our Tempestuous Day, 8. 67 Ibid, 43-45. 68 Ibid, 62. Monahan 17 which the stockingers were paid much less.”69 The violence that began in the rapidly industrializing Midlands spread throughout the island, sending shockwaves through society. In the period, many compared the Luddites to the Jacobins in revolutionary

France.

Another prominent issue in the period leading to riots was the Corn Bill.

Affecting wide portions of the English population, “the bill, if passed, would subsidize domestic agriculture by excluding imported grain priced below a specified figure.”70 This was problematic because with the high rents caused by the Napoleonic Wars, it would become too costly for farmers to grow grain if the price were to drop any lower. In 1815, violence ensued in the form of petitioners and angry crowds.71 As a result of this widespread violence caused because of economic turmoil, the great Empire realized it lacked what a modern society needed: a police force. Violent crime was on the rise and it continued to increase due to this lack of structured order.72 Riots continued, and

“throughout 1816 isolated disturbances had seemed to threaten national revolution.”73

The years of the nineteenth century also saw the rise in a new kind of

Evangelicalism. While this at first may not seem to be something that would affect the

British elites in a negative way, it did. Led by Hannah More and the “religion of the heart,”74 her brand of Evangelicalism was “uncompromisingly at odds with worldliness.

For the elites in society - the “cultivated, sophisticated, reasonable and urbane” - the

69 Ibid, 62-66 70 Ibid, 148. 71 Christopher Hibbert, George IV: The Rebel Who Would be King, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 525. 72 Erickson, Our Tempestuous Day, 130. 73 Hibbert, George IV: The Rebel Who Would Be King, 525. 74 Erickson, Our Tempestuous Day, 86 -87. Monahan 18

Evangelical push was at odds with what they had experienced the Enlightenment period, for worldliness was the ultimate marker of status. The Regent himself was a patron of worldliness: he supported the arts, sciences, and literature.75 This is in direct opposition to the popular movement led by More, and thus, is another reason for the search for a symbol of stability for a particular social class.

Most notably, the malaise in society was in part due to the Napoleonic wars. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Napoleon Bonaparte ruled Europe. As

Napoleon’s power grew through this period, the once great British Empire was at risk for invasion by the French Emperor, even though the British naval forces were stronger than those of the French.76 The English were at war with the French Empire through 1815.

While the Battle of Waterloo, in 1813, was a huge victory for Wellington, and England in general,77 “they [the British population] declined to acknowledge that the Regent had had any part in it,”78 perhaps adding to George’s aforementioned inferiority complex.

However, the English victory did not last long. In 1815, Napoleon escaped his exile in

Elba, and the uncertainty continued.79

It is in this period of insecurity that Warwick Vase replicas began to be produced.

Even though Lord Warwick refused to allow direct copies to be made, replicas of the

Warwick Vase do exist from before 1813 and the first three-dimensional replicas of the

Warwick Vase, dating to the early nineteenth century, are seen as an attempt to embody the spirit of eighteenth century Classical ideals represented by the prime object. Many of

75 Hibbert, George IV: The Rebel Who Would Be King, 473. 76 Erickson, Our Tempestuous Day, 12. 77 Ibid, 102. 78 Hibbert, George IV: The Rebel Who Would Be King, 466. 79 Erickson, Our Tempestuous Day, 155. Monahan 19 the original replicas are silver or silver gilt. As a whole, Regency period silver captured a particular market: the works, especially in the form of presentation pieces, were “directed exclusively at the very rich.”80 The works featured lavish decoration that weighed more, and thus cost more than works that had the same function a decade earlier.81 The

Warwick Vase replicas proliferated the market, and exerted a great impact on the decorative arts: “One senior silver specialist has claimed that the change from generally oval to round tureen shapes in England c. 1815-20 was almost entirely due to this famous vase.”82 Paul Storr, for Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, made what are probably the first three-dimensional replicas of the Warwick Vase in 1812 for the Prince Regent, in the form of a set of silver-gilt ice pails. Storr probably looked at Piranesi’s drawings in order to create the replicas, making them in some ways, a replica of a replica.83 The Prince

Regent, eventually to be George IV, was enamored of the Neoclassical84 and these vases were to be the first commissions, of many.

The Prince Regent is credited with purchasing what may be the very first replicas of the Warwick Vase, and he also continued to purchase copies of the form through his lifetime. It is known that he also acquired vases, in the form of two ice pails, from Paul

Storr for Rundell Bridge & Rundell in 1834-5, now part of the Royal Collection.85 Ice pails were filled with ice and fruit and are considered to be a dining accoutrement. The

Prince Regent himself felt as if he was not appreciated for his glory:

80 Timothy Schroder, The National Trust Book of English Domestic Silver 1500 -1900, (London: Butler & Tanner, Ltd., 1988), 243. 81 Ibid, 243. 82 John Sandon, The Dictionary of Worcester Porcelain, Volume 1: 1751-1851, (Woodbridge: The Antique Collectors Club, 1993), 359. 83 Udy, “Piranesi’s ‘Vasi’, The English Silversmith and His Patrons,”830. 84 Ibid, 828. 85 The Royal Collection Trust, “Two Ice Pails,” http://www.royalcollection.org.uk./collection/50811/two- ice-pails (accessed October 8, 2013). Monahan 20

His achievements cried out for recognition. He saw himself the way an admiring artist had imagined him a decade earlier, as deified price, handsome and serene, standing aloft on a pedestal of integrity. Below him lesser mortals were embroiled in strife, but he belonged to a higher realm above it all. His being radiated qualities the artist carefully identified: Condescension, Liberality, Honor, Dignity, Fortitude, Benevolence, Tenacity, Charity and Justice. He was glorious, unsurpassable. ‘No prince was ever idolized by the people of this country as I am,’ he told one of his courtiers. And why not? At everything pertaining to princeliness he was, in his own estimation, superb.86

Perhaps we can see the multitude of vases made for the Prince Regent as his very own pedestal – appropriating the glory of the past and placing himself upon it. The Regent was known for commissioning works based on the classical, and even had the well- known neoclassical sculptor, Antonio Canova working for him in Rome.87 Additionally, he had supported “the nation’s purchase of the marble friezes from the neglected

Parthenon brought back from Greece by the seventh Earl of Elgin.”88 This suggests that

Regent had a passion or affinity with the ancient world; clearly it meant something to him. Thus, his higher realm was created from something from the past, which signified glory. Thus, the Warwick Vases he requested were physical symbols of the glory he felt he presented to the English public.

In conjunction with his appreciation and appropriation of the ancient, George IV, as Prince Regent, was known for glorifying and celebrating the dominance of the British

Empire, particularly its military fetes. In 1814 he hosted a celebration for the Duke of

Wellington at his London residence, Carlton House, that included “transparencies representing such appropriate subjects as ‘Overthrow of Tyranny by the Allied Powers’

86 Erickson, Our Tempestuous Day, 170-171. 87 Hibbert, George IV: The Rebel Who Would be King, 471. 88 Ibid, 472. Monahan 21 and ‘Military Glory’.”89

Paul Storr and the firm Rundell, Bridge & Rundell are responsible for creating the vast majority of metal versions of the Warwick Vase in this period. The firm, comprised of Philip Rundell, John Bridge, and Edmund Rundell, contracted out other firms to produce some of their commissions because of the high number of orders they received.

Paul Storr and his firm was one of those contracted to produce works for Rundell, Bridge

& Rundell: “the exact nature of the arrangement is not entirely clear, though it would seem that the Storr and Smith establishments became actual subsidiaries of Rundells.”90

A Pair of Wine Coolers now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, were made circa 1812, also by Paul Storr for Rundell, Bridge & Rundell. Much smaller than the Warwick Vase, and without the eighteenth-century pedestal, the sterling-silver and gilt wine coolers brazenly reference the Bacchanalian imagery by making the function of the two pieces to hold wine at an extravagant, early nineteenth-century dinner table.

Importantly, the Pair of Wine Coolers also have royal provenance; the bases bear the coat of arms of Frederick, Duke of York, the second son of King George III.91 By placing replicas of The Warwick Vase upon his tabletop, Frederick, along with other members of the aristocracy that displayed similar Warwick Vases, would be proclaiming the superiority of British culture that the original evokes, even though as Erickson notes,

British society itself was in the beginnings of decline.

Another example from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s collection is Covered

Vase, which dates to 1813-14. This sterling silver example unusually features a cover,

89 Ibid, 459. 90 Schroder, English Domestic Silver, 242 - 244. 91 Katherine Howe, “Paul Storr, London Silversmith,” in Rienzi: European Decorative Arts and Paintings, 102. Monahan 22 which is not copied from the Warwick Vase; however, it features Bacchanalian iconography: a fluted plinth above a border of foliage and fruit on the cover supports a sculpted putto and lion finial, all of which are items that relate to Bacchus. This vase bears the engraved arms of Sir David Ochterlony, a Major General in the British Army, famous for his leadership in the war with Nepal. The fact that it was made for a major contributor to the Imperialistic tendencies of the British Empire is telling in our story of this appropriated ancient form.

Another version made by Storr in 1812 is A George III Silver Warwick Vase and

Plinth (figure 4). This replica is interesting because it copies not only the bowl like the previous replicas looked at by Storr, but also references the plinth that the Warwick Vase has. In this case, however, the plinth, on four feet, features chased acanthus and clover borders, an inscription, the accolé arms for a Viscount, and two panels of military trophies.92 The replica was made for Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth. The arms depicted on the plinth represent Pellew, “with the same arms impaling those of Frowde, for his wife, Susan, daughter of James Frowde of Knowle, Wiltshire.”93 The replica of the Warwick Vase was made for Viscount Exmouth, as “a handsome compliment from the officers of the Mediterranean fleet,” as Pellew was Commander-in Chief of British naval forces in the Mediterranean in 1811.94 The inscription reads: “Presented to the

Right Honourable Admiral Lord Exmouth &c, &c, &c, as mark of their respect and esteem, by the officers who served under his Lordship’s command in the

92 Christie’s, “A George III Silver Warwick Vase and Plinth,” www.christies.com/lotfinder/LotDetails Printable.aspx?intObjectID=5316079 (accessed September 22, 2013). 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. Monahan 23

Mediterranean.”95 This replica of the Warwick Vase illustrates several interesting ideas about replicas of the vase. First, that the replicas are important because their maker, Paul

Storr, is considered to be one of the finest silversmiths of the period. This is certainly true in the case of the presentation piece made for Viscount Exmouth. Secondly, it was made for Viscount Exmouth, a nobleman that was not only in charge of “defending

British commerce in the region from Napoleon’s southern empire” but also “served his country in the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic Wars,”96 both of which are prestigious accolades. These facts from Viscount Exmouth’s biography feed into the idea that the elite wanted representations that demonstrated the greatness of the

British Empire – we can only assume that a man that was part of the British Naval forces during such high profile events would want to own and present an object that so vividly proclaimed the Empire’s greatness.

A second Paul Storr for Rundell, Bridge & Rundell vase presented to a British naval figure is that which was given to Captain William Cowper of the East India

Company Bombay Engineers. A George III Silver Warwick Vase and Plinth (figure ) was made in 1812 and the bowl features the form and iconography of the Warwick Vase.

This work features a pedestal decorated with acanthus foliage, and carrying inscriptions on two sides. The other two sides of the pedestal feature engraved depictions of the Port of Bombay.97 This vase directly alludes to the prosperity and command that the British

Empire had on the world. The inscriptions praise Captain William Cowper for his creation of the Bombay Docks:

95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Christie’s, “A George III Silver Warwick Vase and Plinth,” www.christies.com/lotfinder/LotDetails Printable.aspx?intObjectID=5322492 (accessed September 22, 2013). Monahan 24

Thereby enabling The Port of Bombay to add and maintain the best Bulwarks of the Mother Country By Building and Repairing Ships of the Line of the Largest Class and at the same time to afford ample and extensive Accomodation [sic] to the Commerical [sic] Shipping of British India Mense Septembis MDCCCX.98

This is a direct reference to the great naval and imperial force that the British Empire held at the end of the eighteenth century and into the early nineteenth, subsequently underscoring its importance, and its importance is shown through the form of the

Warwick Vase. The words themselves are charged, and indicative of perhaps a greater meaning for the vase: “By Building and Repaning Ships of the Line of the Largest

Class,” it perhaps directly references the fracturing empire and the restoration process, but also the repaired state of the Warwick Vase. As noted in the introduction, the British saw themselves as the rightful heirs to ancient Rome, and subsequently they inflicted their own mark on the form.

As the decade progressed, metal was no longer the sole material used in replicas of the Warwick Vase, and Rundell, Bridge & Rundell were no longer the only manufacturers of replicas. Green & Ward, a firm established in 1789, began to rival

Rundell, Bridge & Rundell. A Pair of George III Silver Wine Coolers, Collars and

Liners exists from 1819, with the mark of Paul Storr and that of Green & Ward (figure

6).99 Featuring the iconography of the Warwick Vase, these silver versions once belonged to The Court and Assistants of the Worshipful Company of Mercers, a historic trade association. The object belonged with them until May 1974,100 but there is no record as to whether it was originally made for the group or if it fell into their hands.

98 Ibid. 99 Christie’s, “A Pair of George III Silver Wine Coolers, Collars and Liners,” www.christies.com/lotfinder /LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=5150383 (accessed September 22, 2013). 100 Ibid. Monahan 25

Regardless, the fact that an association of a prominent class of British men held replicas of the Warwick Vase furthers the idea that the replicas of the vase were representative of some sort of spirit that referred back to a past age.

The first porcelain replicas begin appearing around the same time as the metal replicas; however, they lack the iconography of the Warwick Vase. This type of replication is not unusual in the period, and the use of published designs began taking hold in the mid-eighteenth century with publications such as Chippendale’s The

Gentleman & Cabinet-maker’s Director (1754), Mayhew and Ince’s The Universal

System of Household Furniture (1762), and d’Hancarville’s Collection of Etruscan,

Greek and Roman Antiquities (1766).101 This practice would continue into the nineteenth century with texts such as Owen Jones’s The Grammar of Ornament (1856).102 Thus, it would not have been unusual for designers to use Piranesi’s Vasi, candelabra…ed antichi. Several porcelain examples from Flight, Barr & Barr, a porcelain manufactory exist and they retain the bowl’s shape and small pedestal, as well as the twisted grapevine handles. Instead of traditional bacchanalian iconography, however, they feature painted decoration. One example of this, A Worcester (Flight, Barr & Barr) Porcelain

Burgundy-Ground Two-Handled ‘Warwick’ Vase, features a still-life painting of shells

(figure 7).103 Two more vases by Flight, Barr & Barr, from the same period also include the plinth, elevating the bowl (figure 8).

These porcelain versions also neglect the bacchanalian iconography, and also deviate from other the Burgundy-Ground vase. Rather than a still life, one vase features

101 Gervais, “A Pair of Corner Cabinets,” in Rienzi: European Decorative Arts and Paintings, 90. 102 Raizman, “Design, Society, and Standards,” in History of Modern Design, 69-70. 103 Christie’s, “A Worcester (Flight, Barr & Barr) Porcelain Burgundy-Ground Two-Handled ‘Warwick’ Vase,” www.christies.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=5607813 (accessed September 22, 2013) Monahan 26

“a view of ‘Romayn’s Island, Lake of Killourney’ and the second features a painting of

‘The Task.’ Both feature more painted decoration on the plinth: mythical beasts, landscapes, scrolls, shells, and a child reading.104 Warwick Vase copies made in

Worcester porcelain rarely used the exact iconography featured on the vase. This is probably because the three-dimensional iconography and figures would have been difficult to reproduce in porcelain.105 However, it was attempted, but at a later date, and will be discussed in the next chapter.

The Victoria and Albert Museum houses an example of a Warwick Vase produced by the firm Barr, Flight & Barr dating to ca. 1820 (figure 9). This biscuit porcelain piece stands at only 25.4 centimeters tall, and does not bear any of the iconography present on The Warwick Vase. Although it has an elongated bowl, it is the form, including the eighteenth-century base and twisting handles, which are replicated. In this case, the mutant is replicating the form of the prime object, rendering it a non- functional decorative object that embodies and represents the spirit of late eighteenth- century Britain.

The Derby Porcelain Manufactory also attempted to replicate the Warwick Vase in porcelain. Like the Flight, Barr & Barr versions, the Derby examples do not replicate all of the iconography of the original. As described in chapter one, the Derby examples retain the form of the bowl, the twisted vine handles, and some of the grape leave and fruit ornamentation, however, the manufactory opted to add on a circular footed base and use Imari decoration. Imari featured a color palette of red, blue, and gold, and the

104 Christie’s, “Two Worcester (Flight, Barr & Barr) Porcelain Vases on a Fixed Stand,” www.christies.com /lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=1982795 (accessed September 22, 2013). 105 Sandon, The Dictionary of Worcester Porcelain, Volume 1: 1751-1851, 359. Monahan 27 designs themselves were inspired by Japanese porcelain. Imari is the name of the

Japanese port where many thought the designs to be from, but later research determined that they were actually from Arita. The designs were considered complicated, and were known to the British as Japan pattern. 106 It is interesting that while the complicated three-dimensional modeling was also avoided at this juncture, the manufactories did retain small bits of it, such as the leaves and vine handles. Even more of a design choice was that instead of leaving the vase unadorned as the previous example was, the manufactory decided to use a rather complicated glazed design scheme. Perhaps we can see a connection between the original vase and this version with an Asian-influenced design. Both are appropriating design elements of other cultures in some way. The vase appropriates the imagery of ancient world, and the glory of its empire, while the Imari design captures the enchantment, and reflects the occupation of the East by the British.

As the nineteenth century progressed, the British Empire continued to decline and subsequently, that upper echelon needed a physical representation of the glory of the

British Empire. The high number of reproductions that were made between 1811 and

1830 demonstrates the demand for Warwick Vases by English Regency Society. If we propose that The Warwick Vase is an eighteenth century symbol of the British Empire and its holdings, we must question why it reoccurs during the first part of the nineteenth century. The most obvious explanation is that it is “classical” in style, and the popularity of Warwick Vases can be understood to be part of the Classical revival that spanned from

1750 – 1830, a period referred to as the Neoclassical. Generated by the rediscovery of

106Ibid, 206. Monahan 28

Pompeii,107 the classical revival of the mid-eighteenth century saw “the importance of the ancient world and its buried treasures,”108 and spawned a cultural movement that evoked what the 18th-century believed to be classical ideals: “a theory – of containment, of rationality, of a benevolent or idealizing view of the social order.”109 Although The

Warwick Vase is not purely an ancient object, the fact that it was pieced together and

“restored” allows for it to represent the eighteenth century ideal of what the Classical should be, and what it should represent, embodying a representation of the Neoclassical.

In general, design in the Regency period was thought to have “a character that was deemed massive, formal, seriously archaeological in its decoration, and almost inevitably gilded.”110 It is no wonder that the Warwick Vase was a highly copied item.

The original vase is a massive character with the trappings of classical influence and archaeological style. The Regency style was considered “appropriate to the patriotism and prosperity of the period,”111 and thus the copies of the Warwick Vase have a place within the social and cultural contexts of the period. Their prolific replication, appropriating the patriotism and prosperity demonstrates the need to copy something that would represent the grandness of the nation, but also be in line with the wealth of the nation. Subsequently, the copies made in silver and silver gilt embody the patriotic and the political.

107 Mark Jordan, “Neoclassicism” The Oxford Companion to Western Art, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t118/e1862 107 (accessed November 22, 2013). 108 Joseph Downs, “Georgian Decorative Art,” Bulletin of the Philadelphia Museum 26, no. 139 (1931): 7 109 Annabel Patterson, “Pastoral and Ideology: the Neoclassical Fête Champêtre,” Huntington Library Quarterly 48, no. 4 (Autumn, 1985): 322. 110 Schroder, English Decorative Silver, 242. 111 Ibid. Monahan 29

In the years following the production of these original replicas of the Warwick

Vase, the form increased in the market. From the time of the first replicas through the

1830s, Warwick Vases were reproduced in metals and in porcelain, trendy and costly materials, making the consumption of the form restricted to the upper echelons of society.

It can be inferred that these objects were meant to be shown and placed in prominent places in the home from research on the conduct of consumers in this period. Purchases of goods were not only for utilitarian purposes, but also “lay emphasis on the importance of visibility, ostentation and display.”112 Therefore, it can be inferred that the vases were not objects which one would keep hidden.

Paul Storr and Rundell, Bridge & Rundell was not the only firm producing examples of the Warwick Vase during the reign of George IV. The London firm Emes &

Barnard made a commemoration Warwick Vase for the retailer Pane & Son in Bath in

1821. This silver Warwick Vase features the form of the bowl of the original and “the singularly bold and beautiful form of the handles is preserved; but the Vine, with its tendrils and clusters, is exchanged for the British Oak, with its foliage and actors, forming a rich wreath immediately under the lip of the vessel. On a projection of the handles is suspended the Laurel Wreath of Triumph.” The support of the vase is made of dolphins, and the plinth covered in seashells and coral. Additionally, the base includes

“Nautical Scientific Instruments, and of those implements used especially in the icy seas,” a compass, a globe, and the British Naval Crown. Important to the unusual iconography on the vase is the arms, inscription, and drawings on the vase. The arms are for Sir William Edward Parry, RN, and the inscription that commemorates Parry’s arctic

112 Marcia Pointon, “Jewellery in eighteenth-century England” in Consumers and Luxury: Consumer culture in Europe 1650-1850, ed. Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford, (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press), 1999, 138. Monahan 30 voyage in 1819 and 1820. The vase was commissioned by the inhabitants of Bath, which was where Parry was born. The drawings on the pedestal are “chasings from Captain

Parry’s original drawings; one representing the Hecla and Griper covered in for the winter; and the other, their situation in the neighbourhood of an Iceberg.”

The choice of shape of the vase is notable; the fact that it is a stylish form, but chooses not to embody Britishness, but rather sea triumph, speaks about the implications of the Warwick Vase as a symbol of national identity. The vase lacks the iconography of the original, and instead features emblems of science and exploration. Thus, replicas that embody the iconography of the original are not relating themselves to these virtues of science and exploration, but instead the virtues of Empire and grandeur. However, the choice of the form of the Warwick Vase could symbolize the fact that science and exploration would not have been possible without the vast nature and wealth of the

British Empire as a whole.

To further the idea that the form of the Warwick Vase is uniquely British, with a

British symbolic meaning, we can look to American versions that create a distinctly separate representation of the form through its iconography. In 1824 and 1835 Thomas

Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner created a pair of Warwick vases. These silver vases were presented to New York governor DeWitt Clinton in 1825. Commissioned by a group of

New York merchants through a design competition,113 the two vases commemorate

Clinton’s promotion of the Erie Canal.114 Now residing in the Metropolitan Museum of

Art in New York, these two Warwick vases are uniquely American. During the War of

113 Elizabeth Ingerman Wood, “Thomas Fletcher A Philadelphia Entrepreneur of Presentation Silver,” Winterthur Portfolio 3, (1967): 159. 114 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Pair of Vases,” www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of- art/1982.4a,b_1988.199 (accessed November 2, 2013). Monahan 31

1812, the ancient “practice of commemorating important occasions with gifts of silver”115 became popular in America, and thus, such a gift was not out of place. The vases are clearly inspired by the Warwick Vase; the shape of the bowl, the grapevine handles, and the rim with hanging grape leaves are almost identical to the presentation pieces created by Paul Storr. This is not happenstance – Fletcher visited the workshop of Rundell,

Bridge & Rundell in 1815.116 His visit to their shop, and appreciation of the form is well documented:

There he saw ‘a fine vase copied form one in the possession of the Earl of Warwick…which was dug from the ruins of Herculaneum. [It] is beautifully made – it is oval, about 2/3 d the side of that made for Hull, the handles are grape stalks and a vine runs all around the covered with leaves & clusters of grapes – below are the heads of Bacchus &c. finely chased – some wine coolers in the same style.’117

However, while there are clear elements that reflect Storr’s Warwick Vases, these two works rid themselves of the Bacchanalian iconography and replace it with a truly

American story. The vases feature Hudson River School-like friezes, illustrating the route of the Canal. The 1824 vase features Guard Lock and Basin and the Aqueduct at

Rochester.118 The 1825 vase features Cohoes Falls and Little Falls of the Mohawk.

Allegorical figures representing Fame, History, Plenty, and a Native American figure, are also included.119 Both vases replace the panthers on the original vases “with North

American species: a mountain lion or panther on one side and a bison on the other.”120

115 Beth Carver Wees, “Ancient Rome via the Erie Canal: The De Witt Clinton Vases,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 42 (2007), 140. 116 Wees, “Ancient Rome via the Erie Canal,” 142. 117 Ibid. 118 Ibid, 153. 119 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Pair of Vases,” www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of- art/1982.4a,b_1988.199 (accessed November 2, 2013). 120 Wees, “Ancient Rome via the Erie Canal,” 150. Monahan 32

Much like the Covered Vase in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s collection, these two vases have covers. In lieu of the three-dimensional Bacchanalian cherub, the covers

American vases feature proud, glorious eagles atop the highest point of the vase.

The appropriation of the form by the Americans signifies the truly British nature of the Warwick Vase. The use of the American version with political implications and nationalistically charged iconography indicates its transformation into an American object. It can be suggested that the American objects are appropriating the British form and thus claiming a place of importance in the world. The appropriation of the form and replacement of the iconography denotes a kind of recognition that the Bacchanalian features belong to the British and that the iconography that Fletcher and Gardiner use is new – much like the American nation – and symbolic of its own growing prominence and rise. Even though it is thought that the American vases are sometimes considered

“crowded, perhaps overdone”121 in comparison to Storr’s works, they are manifestly a symbol of the United States and not the British. In a way, they are acknowledging their heritage as a British colony by appropriating the form and replacing the iconography.

Additionally, Fletcher’s heritage also reflects a desire to have a strongly

“American” version of the vase. His family came to the colonies as early as 1635122 and he himself was involved in the War of 1812. The art historian Elizabeth Ingerman Wood asserts “any meaningful study of his career as an American craftsman must be made in the context of the national scene during his lifetime,”123 but also reflects that “although the outbreak of the war intensified American nationalism, it did not materially change

121 Wood, “Thomas Fletcher,” 164. 122Ibid, 136. 123 Ibid. Monahan 33 public taste for fashions originating abroad.”124 The DeWitt Clinton Vases are asserting that they are uniquely American: the decoration on Fletcher and Gardiner’s vases

“associated explicit references to American industry and geography with classical imagery in order to evoke parallels between America and ancient Rome.”125 Thus, the creation of a Warwick Vase – all the rage in England – but reflective of American ideals and patriotism furthers the idea that the Warwick Vases themselves were implicitly not

American, but British. According to art historian Beth Carver Wees, “with few notable exceptions, most of the English silver reductions remained true to the original vase in design and ornament.”126 Thus, the correlation between the design and some sort of nationalistic sentiment or pride is evident. In order for the DeWitt Clinton Vases to be

“American,” the design needed to be altered to reflect the United States. However, the

British kept the form identical, as they appropriated the ancient source in order to evoke the classical and also to conjure a sense of greatness by its association to the ancient and the classical. However, because the work was fabricated from ancient objects, it is not really ancient, but British.

Effectively, the historical context for the replicas of the vase frames them as symbols of longing, and reminders for those that saw them of a time when the British

Empire was more of a dominant force and could be equated with the ancient world.

Becoming prominent contemporaneously with the beginning of the decline of the

Empire’s power, the replicas become repositories for the memory of times past. They subsequently embody a form of nationalism that proclaims the dominance and greatness

124 Ibid, 143. 125 Wees, “Ancient Rome via the Erie Canal,” 142. 126 Ibid, 145. Monahan 34 of the British Empire through the guise of an ancient design, now in the form of lavish tabletop accoutrements. Additionally, using a ‘classical’ model to represent the present recalls Aby Warburg’s Nachleben der Antike, where “the reappearance of iconographic formulas and cultural associations sometimes centuries after they had appeared entirely defunct – as the central drama of the European cultural memory, ceaselessly threatened by the ultimate barbarity of oblivion.”127 The reappearance of this ‘classical’ model, The

Warwick Vase, shows that there was an undercurrent of decline in society during the period that threatened the prominence of the British Empire – and the appearance of the replicas shows a desire to keep that iconography in the present to remind the British of what their cultural heritage was, and how they should strive to preserve their identity.

In 1833, probably riding on the popularity of the form of The Warwick Vase, the

English ceramic manufactory, Spode Ceramic Works, issued a plate with the transferware design of The Warwick Vase . This is one of the first times that a Warwick Vase appears not in a three dimensional form, but as a mass-produced print on a common, albeit upper class, functional household item, a plate. The form of the vase on the plate is incredibly similar to that of Piranesi’s drawings, featuring the top of the base at a slight angle.

Interestingly, the design cuts off the large eighteenth-century pedestal, and primarily features the bowl with its bacchanalian iconography. The functional nature of the plate and ability to mass-produce the item demonstrate how this object proliferated in British visual and material culture in the early years of the nineteenth century, and how it was likely an unavoidable image for conscientious citizens of the

British Empire.

127 Salvatore Settis, The Future of the Classical, trans. Allan Camaron (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 84. Monahan 35

Monahan 36

Chapter 2: Empire and Turmoil: 1840-1890

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, the British Empire was in embroiled in turmoil. In the 1840s, it began annexing territories such as Hong Kong, the

Gambia, Afghanistan, Indian territories, and others, at a rapid pace, “triggered by the need to secure existing frontiers and [to] pacify internal dissent, rather than by the drive for new markets.”128 Often, the imperial rule by force in such places led to rebellion and violence by the native populations.129 Additionally, according to architectural historian G.

Alex Bremner, the Empire was “racked by economic depression, the 1870s and ‘80s in

Britain were decades in which a growing sense of uncertainty surrounded the nation’s social, political, and economic future.”130 Bremner also suggests that the nation was attempting to strengthen its ties with its own colonies, and therefore the country was endeavoring to tie architectural programs to “national, imperial, and metropolitan identities” and “British cultural identity.”131

There was a “desire to celebrate the strength, magnitude, and unity of the British

Empire, [and that desire] must be viewed in relation to the evolving predicament in which

Britain found itself during the closing decades of the nineteenth century.”132 Economic depression in 1883-86, followed by the steady realization that other industrial nations

128 Miles Taylor, “The 1848 Revolutions and the British Empire,” Past & Present, no. 166 (Feb 2000): 148. 129 Ibid, 152. 130 G. Alex Bremner, “’Some Imperial Institute’: Architecture, Symbolism, and the Ideal of Empire in Late Victorian Britain, 1887-93,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 62, No. 1 (March 2003): 51. 131 Bremner, “’Some Imperial Institute,’” 51. 132Ibid, 51-52. Monahan 37 such as the United States, Germany, and Russia were becoming increasingly competitive, meant that Britain was no longer the only genuine world power.133 Thus, it is realistic that the British, whether in the mother country or in a colony, were looking for a way to display and reflect upon its former status in this period, and did so through a particular visual form.

Design and decorative arts were at the helm of Britain’s uncertainty as a world power. In 1851, The Exhibition of Art and Industry was held.134 Featuring Joseph

Paxton’s masterpiece the Crystal Palace, the 1851 exhibition was “originally conceived as a national fair, but in the process of planning became international, attracting 14,000 producers, half of whom were from outside Britain.”135 This switch - from one of nationalistic pride and sentiment - to that of an international stage - further pushes design into the realm of international competition, and the decline of the superiority of Britain.

Some historians have seen the Great Exhibition as a showcase of modernization of industry and design, and thus place pressure on the watershed event to not only be an event that was “epitomizing the economic structure of Britain”136 but also “its imperial structure.”137 Thus, if the exhibition switched from a nationalistic sentiment to that of engaging the wider world, it hints at the destruction of the status of Britain as the apex of civilization and points to the engagement of design as an integral element in this discourse and sentiment.

In this same period of economic turmoil and colonial upheaval, the Victorians in

133 Bremner, “’Some Imperial Institute,’” 52. 134 Raizman, David, “Design, Society, and Standards,” 63. 135 Ibid, 64. 136 Sylvi Johansen, “The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Precipice in Time?,” Victorian Review 22, No. 1 (Summer 1996): 63. 137 Ibid, 63. Monahan 38

Britain were fascinated with “the past and with exotic cultures,”138 and this expression of

Eclecticism often appeared within the decorative arts they placed in their homes: “Suites of furnishings, toilet ware for bedrooms, or individual armchairs were given attractive names, such as Lichfield, Beaufort or Eugénie, and these links to an aristocratic, romantic, or exotic past were helpful in making the product desirable to an aspiring middle-class market.”139 Furthermore, the market for decorative arts was one in which historic revival styles – such as Regency – were sought after,140 and the demand for antiques, or antique-like objects, was high. 141 The Warwick Vase replicas in this period are not necessarily architecture, and they are not, for the most part, forms that grace the domestic sphere. Rather, they embody aspects of both functions. The bulk of vases made in the period are made for the external world. They were placed in gardens, both public and private, and much more monumental in scale than their early nineteenth century predecessors. In a way, they are garden architecture, reflective of the program that

Britain was adopting in the period, in which expressions of colonial unity and the exotic were prevalent.

Although they decline in quantity, production of replicas of The Warwick Vase does not cease after the end of the Neoclassical and the beginning of the Edwardian Era.

At the University of Cambridge there is a bronze Warwick Vase outside of the Senate

House (figure 10). Made in Paris, it was purchased by Hugh Percy, 4th Duke of

Northumberland and “later presented to the University of Cambridge on his installation

138 Frances Collard, “Historical Revivals, Commercial Enterprise and Public Confusions: Negotiating Taste, 1860-1890,” Journal of Design History 16, No 1 (2003): 36. 139 Ibid, 39. 140 Ibid, 41. 141 Ibid, 42. Monahan 39 there as Chancellor in 1842.”142 Interestingly, while the vase is comparable in size to the original, its iconography is not an exact copy: “where there should be a thyrsus and a pedum behind Bacchus and Silenus, they are both the same: two thyrsi.”143 The object’s iconography clearly recalls the original vase. The iconography can therefore also be reflective of the idea of glory and pride for the British Empire, reminding the intellectual class of the monumental status of the British Empire. The presence of the vase at

Cambridge is asserting that Cambridge, one of the nation’s intellectual centers, is itself is part of the British Empire’s national heritage. In the period, according to historian James

A. Schmiechen, “the designers of buildings, interior space, and objects, used history as an analogue for the present and as a method for counteracting the ‘element of decay’ in society. Historical forms ‘connect our sympathies with the men they represent’ and are

‘an elevated starting point for yet higher attainments.’” 144Therefore, tying The Warwick

Vase and the apex of the British Empire to Cambridge is not unreasonable: they go hand in hand.

Previously, the bulk of Warwick Vase replicas were made of silver or silver-gilt.

However, between 1840 and 1890, this practice wanes and the use of other, less expensive materials becomes more common. Bronze as a medium becomes increasingly popular and its use is notable because it is more economical to make full size replicas out of it rather than the silver of the Regency period. Another medium, which appears in this period, is terracotta. Also less expensive than silver, the use of terracotta signifies a type of democratization of the form, making it accessible to more socio-economic classes.

142 Matthews, “Four Nineteenth Century Garden Ornaments,” 281. 143 Ibid. 144 James A. Schmiechen, “The Victorians, the Historians, and the Idea of Modernism,” The American Historical Review 93, No. 3 (April 1988): 305. Monahan 40

Additionally, these replicas are not from named artists, but rather, unsigned. A circa

1860 Victorian Terracotta Model of the Warwick Vase and Pedestal (figure 11) is evidence of the form’s transition into a new medium, Coadestone. Made by Mark Henry

Blanchard, the self-proclaimed successor to Eleanor Coade’s artificial stone business,145 the object stands at approximately four and a half feet tall and retains the color seen in

Coade’s works.146 The size hints that the work may have been used outside, as does the material. Both terracotta and the Coadestone were commonly used in outdoor garden ornaments, as they are able to hold up under harsh conditions outside. This contrasts with the original marble Warwick Vase that required the construction of a greenhouse to protect it from the harsh elements and the luxurious silver examples of the previous period which were designed to be viewed, and sometimes used, indoors.

Another example of a Victorian-era Warwick Vase appears at the Oxford

Botanical Gardens (figure 12); among many different nineteenth century garden ornaments, there is a cement-based replica of The Warwick Vase. Austin and Seeley, a

London-based firm that specialized in faux stone garden ornaments, manufactured the vases at “approximately half the size of the original,”, and one was purchased by Oxford

University in the 1830s.147 The firm was originally Van Spangen and Powell, and had been purchased by Felix Austin, and re-established as Austin and Seeley around 1828.148

The vase was added to the Oxford gardens by a Botany professor, Charles Daubeny,149 as part of a program to rehabilitate the gardens that were in shambles to benefit the

145 Christie’s, “A Victorian Terracotta Model of the Warwick Vase and Pedestal,” www.christies.com/ lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=5069122 (accessed September 22, 2013). 146 Christie’s, “A Victorian Terracotta Model of the Warwick Vase and Pedestal.” 147 Matthews, “Four Nineteenth Century Garden Ornaments,” 281. 148 Ibid, 275-276. 149 Ibid, 264. Monahan 41 advancement of the study of science at the university.150

A second cement Warwick Vase is found nearby at Nuneham Park, and it is speculated that it dates from the same time as the Oxford copy.151 The fact that these two vases are situated near each other, and date from approximately the same period, demonstrate their popularity in British visual and material culture in the period.

Advancing the sciences at Oxford, the same movement driving the rehabilitation of the gardens, also pushed for the elevation of the University Museum, a markedly neo- classical establishment. It also pushed for the move of the Ashmolean collection, which consisted of plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculptures, to a brand new neoclassically styled building.152 This connection to a clear program by the University to progress the sciences – a very classical mode of operation – and to make available replicas of ancient sculptures – ties into connecting the world of Oxford to the ancient, and thus, tying the university to the idea of greatness and the classical. The vase at Oxford does not have the eighteenth-century base added during the original’s restoration. Perhaps Oxford was attempting to adopt the philosophy of its famous Victorian-era Slade Professor of Fine

Art, John Ruskin, who “believed that ‘the art of any country’ should be the ‘exponent of its social and political virtues.’”153

Evidence of the vase in the Oxford Botanical Gardens exists in photograph form:

“William Henry Fox Talbot, the pioneer of photography, made a photograph of the vase in situ in July 1842 as part of a lecture Daubeny was to give on the chemistry of

150 Ibid, 283. 151 Ibid, 281. 152 Ibid, 283. 153 Bremner, “’Some Imperial Institute,’” 66. Monahan 42 photography.”154 The photograph is now in the collection of the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford. (figure 12) Interestingly, the vase was replicated in the newest, most innovative medium of the era, photography. The photograph features greenhouses,

Danby Gate, and the residence of the Oxford Botanic Gardens’s gardener.155 The replica of the Warwick Vase is in the right foreground of the photograph and its inclusion could be merely a result of its location. Nonetheless, the location can also be telling: the vase is placed in a setting that is relatively wide open, suggesting it is a focal point that visitors must look at. The photograph itself also lends itself to the idea of copies and replicas: it is a replica of the replica of the Warwick Vase.

However, what is most important is the size and function of the vase in the

Oxford Botanical Gardens. It is a decorative planter, made to contain soil and plants, and designed to weather the harsh English climate. The form of the vase, with its deep basin and decorative elements, was what mattered, and what conveyed the aura of The Warwick

Vase and its ideals. Additionally, while it is grand in size, it is still only half of the size of the original vase. Importantly, the vase is made out of cement, a highly affordable material, and was produced by a company that specialized in garden ornaments. This practical, and much more financially accessible form, suggests the pervasiveness of the of the Warwick Vase in the visual and material consciousness of the citizens of the British

Empire.

As the British landscape was dotted with garden ornaments inspired by the

Warwick Vase in the late nineteenth century, the replicas began to have a second, similar vase that was often seen in the same gardens. Many of the vases that are currently sold

154 Matthews, “Four Nineteenth Century Garden Ornaments,” 281. 155 “Photograph of the Botanic Garden, Oxford,” Museum of the History of Science, Oxford University, Inventory No. 31601, http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/ (accessed November 12, 2013). Monahan 43 from that period are sold in pairs, and the other half of the pair is that of what the decorative arts have termed an Albani Vase. Featuring similar Bacchanalian iconography, the Albani Vase, has the exact same bowl shape, grapevine handles, and program of decoration around the rim. However, the vases feature four heads on each side instead of three. It appears to be a combination of derived from Torlonia Vase at

Villa Albani and the Warwick Vase. The Torlonia Vase is a first century B.C. object that features Bacchanalian iconography.156 It had extensive restorations throughout time, altering its appearance.157 Interestingly, it bears similarities to the Warwick Vase in that it features a nineteenth century “grape-vine border with an egg and dart moulding above the frieze,”158 perhaps suggesting the influence of the Warwick Vase on it. The Albani Vase as a pastiche combines elements of the Warwick Vase, a pastiche itself, and Torlonia

Vase.

One example of a pair consisting of a Warwick Vase and an Albani Vase, dates to the second half of the nineteenth century (figure 13). Attributed to J. M. Blashfield, winner of medals for Terracotta at the International Exhibition of 1862, and a silver medal at the Paris International Exhibition of 1867,159 these 25-inch high, 41 ½ inch wide vessels were made for garden decoration. A second pair with both of the Warwick Vase and Albani Vase, from J.M. Blashfield, made in almost identical proportions, and dating to approximately the same time were owned by Baron and Baroness Sweerts de Landas

156 Luca Leoncini, “The Torlonia Vase: History and Visual Records from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 54 (1991): 99. 157 Ibid, 102-105. 158 Ibid, 99. 159 Christie’s, “A Pair of Victorian Terracotta Models of the Warwick and Albani Vases,” www.christies. com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=5460960 (accessed September 22, 2013). Monahan 44

Wyborgh (figure 14).160 Part of the Dunsborough Park Garden Statuary, they were clearly displayed outside and importantly, their provenance indicates that they were purchased by a noble family, furthering the idea that the vases were in a way, in the service of the elites.

Gardens have particular significance for the Victorian audience, and the sculptures they placed in them were not just an aesthetic choice, but a meaningful one.

According to historian David Lambert “sculpture in Victorian public parks had articulated an idea of community...These monuments promoted a particular, bourgeois notion of community, based on civic virtue and personal behavior, and they offer an intimation that community is achievable.”161 Gardens in general in the period were significant as they have “been convincingly analyzed as an exercise in social control,”162and “many of the original sculptures and inscriptions explicitly represent

Victorian ideology: patriotism, imperialism, deference, hard work, temperance, and duty.”163 Lambert furthers the idea of using the ancient and exotic as appropriation in garden ornamentation through an example. He discusses Cleopatra’s Needle on the

Victoria Embankment as a representation of “exotica”164 that “afforded visitors glimpses of the world beyond, albeit one refracted through the glass of empire, and confirming

Britain’s dominion.”165 Thus, it is not out of place, and even appropriate, that we place

Victorian-era Warwick Vases into the same realm. They too represent a different world,

160 Christie’s, “A Pair of Victorian Terracotta Models of the Warwick and Albani Vases,” www.christies. com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=5693806 (accessed September 22, 2013) 161 David Lambert, “The Meaning and Re-meaning of Sculpture in Victorian Public Parks,” in Sculpture and the Garden, edited by Patrick Eyres and Fiona Russell (Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), 99. 162 Ibid. 163 Ibid. 164 Ibid, 104. 165 Ibid. Monahan 45 and their appropriation into the world of British gardens suggests their hold on the glory of the ancient world. Since the nation is to be honored and glorified through its outdoor aesthetic, and its populaces controlled and maintained through the order of its gardens, the vase in this context is surely not an innocent bystander. It is an object, much like

Cleopatra’s Needle, that is charged with meaning, and was clearly selected for a purpose.

As a form that was presented as a trophy of glory in the early years of the nineteenth century, it was transformed in the second half. Imposing, and already in a charged atmosphere, it pushes the glorification of the empire and reminds those that see it of its importance and domination.

Additionally, the media used to create the cement and terracotta vases share something: their materiality. The use of two faux stone materials suggest that the makers were not trying to replicate a Paul Storr silver work but instead copy the original itself.

The Warwick Vase is made from Carrara marble, commonly seen in most Italian statuary and ancient ruins. The cement and terracotta can be seen as a way to capture the essence of the original vase by capturing its materiality, without the expense. This idea is furthered by the fact that many of these vases were likely meant not only to reside outside, but to reside where many could see them: in private, yet public spaces. This signifies a kind of return to the original state, and an emulation of the perceived placement of the original to the Victorian audience.

Eventually, marble was in fact used to replicate the Warwick Vase. Warwick

Vases made from Italian serpentine, a type of green metamorphic rock similar to marble, began cropping up in the late nineteenth century. One example that dates to the late nineteenth century but lacks a provenance features a square plinth, but retains the Monahan 46 decorative program and form of the original. A second example, dating to circa 1880, features the bowl and decoration of the original, but lacks the grapevine handles (figure

15). This is unusual – many examples lack the bowl decoration, but retain the handles, even when they are incorporating a completely unrelated decorative program. While we do not have adequate provenance information on this vase dating to the time it was made, we do know it ended up in the collection of H.R.H The Princess Margaret, Countess of

Snowdon and was displayed in the Garden Room of her Private Apartment at Kensington

Palace.166 This means that the serpentine replica of the Warwick Vase did end up in the

British Empire at some point. Therefore, we can suggest that it, along with other serpentine vases, reflected the Victorian style of Eclecticism: the exotic – the use of a material unlike what is available in England – and the ancient. Additionally, they are an expression of the appropriation of an exotic and its transformation into a British object, reflecting the imperial hold over other realms that Britain believed it had. Arguably, the serpentine vases are closer to the Warwick Vase than many of the replicas made out of other materials, including those emulating stone. They were not molded or cast, but carved from a type of rock, just as the original was. Furthermore, that rock came from

Italy – the place where the original hailed – they are drawing a perhaps even stronger lineage to the past than other replicas.

While replicas of the Warwick Vase decline between 1840 and 1890, they do still exist. The replicas begin to use less precious media, somewhat democratizing the form, but pushing the significance of the medium chosen. The emulation of stone, and the eventual use of Italian marble, pushes the vases into a relationship evocative of the

166 Christie’s, “An Italian Green-Serpentine Marble Model of the Warwick Vase,” www.christies.com /lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=4703032 (accessed September 22, 2013). Monahan 47 original. The appropriation is more direct, and less of a design inspiration. Rather, the obsession with the ancient and eclectic, coupled with an unsettled state of Imperial reign is the impetus the Victorians needed to reproduce a form that speaks to the nation’s past.

Looking for a British cultural identity, they chose to reproduce not a newly fabricated eclectic item of the past, but instead choose something that was created as an ancient object in the late eighteenth century, and exceptionally popular in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. The continuation of the form in the Victorian period, during this time suggests that the form has some sort of connection to the British cultural identity.

The vase replicas are a way to proclaim power, and assert that power in visual form.

Monahan 48

Chapter 3: Edwardians and Nostalgia

Warwick Vases begin to appear more regularly in between 1890 and 1914, in the

Edwardian period. Drawing from their Neoclassical origins, the Edwardian vases appear not as garden ornaments constructed from common materials, but instead, these are smaller, silver and gilt objects meant to manifestly and symbolically glorify the status of an individual and the Empire from the inside of the home or clubhouse: private institutions for the elite. Through an examination of Warwick Vase replicas made between 1890 and 1914, this chapter looks at the evidence suggesting that the symbolism of the replicas is that of dominance and reflections of nationalism for a society in the grips of decline. They are emblems reflective of the past, and the glory of that past, a form of nostalgia proclaiming power when power was slowly dwindling.

To clarify this Edwardian-era appropriation, it is important to understand that in the Edwardian period, Britain was attempting to reclaim its national style, and the fashion was to have items that were British in style.167 The Victorians, as discussed previously, preferred eclecticism and the exotic, the ancient, and the unknown as inspirations for their design style. The Victorians displayed replicas of the Warwick Vase outdoors, where they were grand in scale, useful in purpose, obvious in placement. Key to their symbolism was the nature of garden ornamentation and its implications in England during that period. During the Edwardian period, we can consider the decline of the

167 Alistair Service, “Edwardian Style,” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T024965 (accessed November 12, 2013). 167 Monahan 49

British aristocracy as a key factor in the reemergence of the form of the Warwick Vase as an indoor object, revealing of aristocratic ideals and meant primarily for the eyes of the upper echelon. The aristocracy in England was “a tough, tenacious, and resourceful

élite”168 that between 1880 and the start of World War I, witnessed as “five centuries of aristocratic history and hegemony were irrevocably reversed.”169 The British patrician class was weakening in power and influence, their wealth was declining, and their vast country estates were crumbling.

This elite class needed something to hold on to, a symbol to represent what was the British elite. In this case, the use of the form of the Warwick Vase represented the prestige of what was the pinnacle of the British Empire. By using the eighteenth-century form, the elite saw the vase as a purely British object that represented the greatness of the empire. It served as visual reminder of their lineage – one that was rooted in the ancient world, and that their culture was the apex of society, even if their country houses were being demolished. To underscore the significance of their choice of form, it should be noted that the British had a choice in design and to some degree remained entrenched in representations of the classical for nationalistic sentiment. In the late nineteenth century,

William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement advocated for “pre-industrial craft traditions”170 and used designs “inspired by the decorative patterns in medieval illuminated manuscripts,”171 but these elements that reflect the British aesthetic past were not adopted for the long run.

The bulk of the Edwardian period replicas are resoundingly exact - the shape and

168 David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, (New York: Vintage, 1999), 4. 169 Ibid, 5. 170 Raziman, David, “The Joy of Work,” in History of Modern Design, 83. 171 Ibid, 84. Monahan 50 iconography of the Warwick Vase are intact, unlike some of the late-Neoclassical versions that only appropriate one or the other. It is the new functions of the Edwardian period wares that relegate them into a different category. During this epoch the form of the Warwick Vase becomes a popular design for prize cups, utilizing the form of not only the ancient section, but also the eighteenth century base, which seemed to make an opportune place for inscriptions. This clearly makes it a replica of our eighteenth-century prime object. These small versions, more like the replicas of the Warwick Vase made in the Regency rather than the large garden ornaments in the Victorian period, also utilized precious materials: silver and gilt. This material switch pushes the idea of the audience for the object as specifically elite. Additionally, the scales of the replicas are more appropriate for the home. These Edwardian Warwick Vases often functioned as prize cups, and therefore not operational in any other manner than as an ostentatious symbol of glory and power. While trophy cups are typically symbolic of individual or team glory and honor in athletics, the choice of the form and iconography of the Warwick Vase seemingly pushes the symbolic meaning of these cups into a greater, more national discussion of visuality and symbolic meaning.

With their purposes the glorification of athleticism, we can take a look at what the relationship between the prize cups, athletics, and the silversmith were in a contemporary, albeit American, description of prize cups:

“The athletic sports of healthy young men and young women, with their interplay of bodily rhythms, easily stir the artistic imagination – as they have stirred it from the Olympic games us-ward. The visual thrills of intercollegiate football; the springy curve of the half-back’s body as the makes the final wrench to get one yard more; the picturesque contour of the wizard baseball pitcher; the nice establishment of unstable equilibrium between the canoeist and his outrigger on one side and the taut tackle of his racing machine on the other; the centaur-like harmony between pony Monahan 51

and polo player – nowhere are decorative motifs suggested by these lines of life and activity more appropriately worked out than on the trophies with which successful effort is rewarded. Within the limitations fixed by the material of the cup or bowl or other designated prize the artist, and he alone, may embody in permanent form a gratifying reminder of fleeting and beautiful combinations on the athletic field.”172

The Edwardian Warwick Vase prize cups are not without precedent. The Ascot

Cupwas made between 1825 and 1826 by Paul Storr and served as a prize for the Gold

Cup, a four-day long horse racing series that began in 1807.173 Thus, there is some historic lineage to the prize cup taking the form of the Warwick Vase, and perhaps then some nationalistic heritage of association with prize cups and tradition. However, the cup, “an example of conspicuous consumption, was meant to be displayed on a sideboard, where it more likely served as a compote for fruit than a winecooler.”174 This functional, domestic purpose is markedly different from the purpose of a twentieth century trophy cup, as described by the contemporary account. While representative of a prize, we also see it as an object with a symbolic purpose rather than a functional one.

The silver gilt vase interestingly keeps the bowl and grape leaf decoration but replaces the heads of Bacchus and Sileneus with the heads of horses. Additionally, this is an unusual example of a Warwick Vase replica for it does not include the grape vine handles, which are one of the most recurring features of the vases. The replacement of heads of Bacchus and Silenus with those of horses was likely done in order for the vase to embody its new purpose as a racing trophy.175

172 Frederick W. Coburn, “Trophies,” Art and Progress 3, no. 11 (Sept. 1912), 713. 173 “Royal Ascot History & Tradition,” Royal Ascot, http://www.ascot.co.uk/royal-ascot-2014/gold-cup- day (accessed November 29, 2013). 174 Ascot Cup,” The Art Institute of Chicago, www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/55515?search_no =1&index=44 (accessed November 29, 2013). 175 Ibid. Monahan 52

Between 1897 and 1898 the Ascot Gold Cup was made by James Garrard (figure

16).176 A truly British form for a truly British race, the cup was won by Edward VII when his prizewinning racehorse Persimmon won the Ascot Gold Cup in 1897.177 The cup features unusual materials: the bowl is made of gold while the plinth is ebonized wood. Additionally, one of the heads is identified as Hercules178 a figure that does not appear on the original or on other vases. Additionally, the lion pelt is specifically identified as that of the Nemean lion. This is suggestive of competition, identifying the imagery with that of the tale of Hercules and his labors, and thus reflective of the competitive spirit of the horse race. This both suggests the glory of the individual, but also that of the nation. The choice of a Warwick Vase form and symbolic changes underscores the symbolic value of the form itself.

Prize cups were not only awarded to the winners of horse races, but also to hunt winners. The North Warwickshire Hunt Mackay Cup is another Edwardian version of the

Warwick Vase that was awarded as a prize (figure 17). Made in 1909 by the London firm Carrington and Co., the cup and decoration is silver while the base is made of ebonized wood.179 The vase clearly pays homage to its area’s heritage: the vase was a prize in the North Warwickshire Hunt. Thus, it is reflective of the local prize antiquity –

The Warwick Vase itself. Interestingly, this vase is a prize for a hunt, and the Ascot Gold

Cup is a prize for a horse race. Both of these pastimes are commonly engaged with the

British elite. In fact, the King, himself, Edward VII, won the Ascot. This further

176 “Ascot Gold Cup,” The Royal Collection Trust, http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/50272/ 176ascot-gold-cup-1897 (accessed November 29, 2013). 177 Ibid. 178 Ibid. 179 Christie’s, “An Edward VII Silver Model of the Warwick Vase,” www.christies.com/lotfinder/ LotDetails Printable.aspx?intObjectID=5440397 (accessed November 22, 2013). Monahan 53 evidences the idea that the replicas were made for a particular audience – a very elite, male, British audience and that it brought symbolic value to its aesthetic.

Warwick Vase replicas in the Edwardian period were not only made as prizes for activities, but also as testimonial pieces: As we have seen in other examples from the nineteenth century, “It was common for large groups of people to subscribe to a fund to present an impressive silver cup or bowl in order to thank a politician, benefactor or merchant who had done some good service to his community.”180 It was tradition, perhaps as far back as the sixteenth-century, to commission grand works in silver as “a way of their owner showing off his wealth and power and often therefore these pieces served no function than to be decorative.”181 The fact that vases were made in the midst of the decline of the British Empire and the patrician class signifies a type of traditional need to have these objects on display as a sign of wealth and signal that they are not necessarily declining. They are objects of reassurance, ostentatious symbols of power and wealth.

One of the most interesting Warwick Vases to appear in the period is dated between 1903 and 1905 (no image available). Engraved with the firm of Elkington &

Co. Ltd, the vase unusually features the Royal coat-of-arms of the Kings of Afghanistan and the Barakzay Dynasty, which ruled Afghanistan from 1826 to 1976.182 This particular vase was part of the Estate of the HRH the late Princess Lilian of Belgium.

The auction lot notes suggest that “it is possible that the British Government gave both

180 Christie’s, “A Silver Jardiniere of Warwick Vase Form,” www.christies.com/lotfinder/LotDetails 180Printable.aspx?intObjectID=5434233 (accessed September 22, 2013). 181 Ibid. 182 Sotheby’s, “Lot 82: King Albert: An Important Edward II Silver-Gilt Warwick Vase on Stand,” http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2003/the-estate-of-hrh-the-late-princess-lilian-of- belgium-am0896/lot.82.html (accessed December 2, 2013). Monahan 54 the Warwick vase and the sideboard dish to King Habibullah Khan on the occasion of the

Anglo-Russian convention of 1907. [At the convention] Great Britain disclaimed any intention of altering the political status of Afghanistan, and Russia declared Afghanistan to be beyond its sphere of influence.”183 In the nineteenth century, Afghanistan was a battlefield for British and Russian interests. After the second Anglo-Afghan war, which lasted from 1878-1880, the Amir of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan rose to power and

“agreed to give the British complete control over Afghanistan’s foreign policy. In return the British supported him financially.”184 After 21 years, Abdur Rahman Khan died and his son, Habibullah Khan succeeded him as Amir of Afghanistan, ruling in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Habibullah Khan is known for trying modernizing

Afghanistan, and his peaceful relationship with the British which culminated with a treaty in 1905 and a visit in 1907. Why did the British use the form of the Warwick Vase in particular to signify a relationship with another country? While Afghanistan was not a

British colony, it did embrace a reciprocal relationship in this period. By gifting

Afghanistan with the Warwick Vase, the British are pushing their own nationalism and nationalistic symbols into a developing country. Perhaps this is to remind both themselves and Afghanistan of their power and influence, and that the British control their foreign policy, and thus their influence on the world, not the Afghans.

The firm Walker & Hall from Sheffield made multiple Warwick Vase replicas in the early twentieth century. Two examples, dating from 1912 and 1913, are seemingly identical: they replicate the Warwick Vase in silver featuring the shape of the bowl, grapevine handles, and vines under the rim. Their twisted vines are almost Art Nouveau

183 Ibid. 184 Ibid. Monahan 55 in style; they lack the figures of Bacchus, Silenus, Aridane, and the follower of Bacchus; rather, the sides of the vase are plain. Perhaps this is not out of place as the British were actively influencing and influenced by the French in the period: in 1908, the Franco-

British Exhibition took place in London, “where the largest number of French Art

Noveau objects ever assembled in the United Kingdom were displayed in the Pavillon

Collectivité André Delieux.”185 An earlier Walker & Hall Warwick Vase replica from

1911 retains the exact iconography from the original with heads on the sides of the vase.

The production of Warwick Vases did not disappear post World War I. Walker &

Hall manufactured interesting versions of the Warwick Vase in 1920. They feature the exact iconography but the shape of the bowl is seemingly elongated and the space between the decorative heads and the grapevine decoration under the rims. The firm

Barnard & Co. also created a presentation cup between 1920 and 1921 featuring a cover that was adorned “with leaf motifs and a fruiting finial.”186 Interestingly, the terminology used to discuss these objects changes as their production dates cease to be from the nineteenth century but switch into the twentieth. The term “modern” is frequently used in Christie’s object descriptions. The vases are no longer replicas of the antique, but

“Modern Silver-Gilt Two-Handled Cup and Cover” or “A Modern Silver Two-Handled

Vase.” The emphasis is put on the fact that it is of the twentieth century and not a Paul

Storr work. This is also reflective in the selling prices. For works that are a century apart, the value of those in the early twentieth century are considerably lower in price.

Those that owned the luxury object were still part of Britain’s elite society. In

185 Andrew Stephenson “Edwardian Cosmopolitanism, ca. 1901-1912,” in The Edwardian Sense: Art, Design, and Performance in Britain, 1901-1910, edited by Morna O’Neill and Michael Hatt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 251. 186 Christie’s, “A Modern Silver-Gilt Two-Handled Cup and Cover,” www.chrities.com/lotfinder /LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=1999623 (accessed September 22, 2013). Monahan 56

1935, King George VI and Queen Mary received a Silver Jubilee gift in the form of a

Warwick Vase.187 The vase was presented to the King and Queen by Maharaja Joodha

Shumshere Jung Bahadur Rana of Nepal. Made by Goldsmith’s and Silversmith’s

Company the same year, it consists of both the bowl and plinth. Unusually, the plinth features an enameled crest (no image available).

While silver, silver gilt, and silver plate Warwick Vases dominate the twentieth century some examples also include porcelain and bronze. Interestingly, it is not an

English porcelain manufactory producing the shape in porcelain; however, it is likely that they were consumed by a British audience. Rather, examples come from international porcelain firms. One particular example, a covered vase based on the Warwick Vase, was made by a Portuguese firm. A Portuguese Porcelain Green-Ground Two-Handled Vase and Cover is dated to the 20th Century (figure 18). The Vase features the vine-like handles, but lacks the ribbed definition seen on most versions. There are grape leaves hanging from below the rim, but they are fewer than on other replicas and more stylized.

Additionally, the entire work is covered in a green, white, and pink floral design. The cover’s finial lacks any reference to the design.188 While we have seen a cherub related to Bacchus, grapes, and even the symbolic American eagle, this vase uses a pine-cone like finial and appears much more decorative than symbolic. While the vase is not

British, it did end up in the United Kingdom at some point, perhaps suggesting the want for such a shape that references a nationalistic sentiment. An additional two bronze replicas of the Warwick Vase, dating from the second half of the twentieth century,

187 Sally Goodsir, Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts for the Royal Collection Trust, e-mail message to author, October 17, 2013. 188 Christie’s, “A Portuguese Porcelain Green-Ground Two-Handled Vase and Cover,” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetails 188Printable.aspx?intObjectID=4325629 (accessed September 22, 2013). Monahan 57 feature plinths of pink marble.189 Standing at only just over a foot tall, they are clearly decorative objects meant for the home.

The Warwick Vases replicas that appeared between 1890 and 1935 embody the spirit of the original Regency replicas. They are appropriating something from the past and injecting that spirit into the uncertain present that they exist in. The rejection of other styles to symbolically represent nationalism demonstrate society’s affinity to the ancient, and in particular, to the Warwick Vase. The inclusion in gardens as ostensible symbols of imperialism and empire further the fact that this object is a truly British symbol, with a truly British meaning.

189 Christe’s, “A Pair of Bronze Models of the Warwick Vase,” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetails 189Printable.aspx?intObjectID=4805422 (accessed September 22, 2013). Monahan 58

Conclusion

While we have an example of a Portuguese ceramic Warwick Vase, we do not have a market flooded with examples of this object from places other than the United

Kingdom. The vases seem to be made in a form that while it may have briefly crossed into the continent, it was in fact a British convention. The American vases considered in

Chapter Two are clearly different. Their iconography is truly American, and the makers strove to make that apparent in their appropriation of the form: they could truly make it better than the British firms did and they were not going to just emulate the shape and iconography, but make it better and tailor it to their own nation. Not only does this place meaning on the iconography of the Warwick Vase, it pushes the idea that they somehow embodied a nationalistic sentiment. By sticking to the iconography on the original fantasy vase and rarely deviating, the iconography remains British. It encapsulates the eighteenth century, where Britain was the undisputed dominant empire of the Western world as the Romans were in their time. The lineage that they appropriate from the vase, and twist to make their own, makes the form of the Warwick Vase entirely British. Why did the population not choose to use a symbol of their own ancient past such as a Celtic object, or to stick with a different revival style such as Egyptian? Instead, it appears that there was an affinity to this appropriated classical past.

The question that is then presented is why did The Warwick Vase inspire this series of objects for a century and a half after it was created? Of note is that in the period that The Warwick Vase or as art theorist George Kubler refers to it, the prime object, was restored and then copied, Europe was still entranced with the discovery of Herculaneum Monahan 59 and Pompeii, and the excavation of these ancient sites led to “the knowledge of material culture (realia) cultivated by classical philologists and reading to the systematic study of

‘antiquities.’”190 The Neoclassical was the dominant style of the day, representing order, the classical aesthetic, and subsequently, enlightenment:

The very concern of the eighteenth century with the enlightenment, the creation of conditions favouring culture, also led to an increasing interest in the cultural conditions of the past. Winckelmann’s praise for the arts of Greece went with a conviction that the whole of Greek civilization accounted for this efflorescence. His conclusion was that this made ancient civilization supreme, the model to which all others should aspire.191

The replication of an original object from that period meant a kind of appropriation of that object’s past, and subsequently an embodiment of that spirit in the object. The

Warwick Vase, primarily a restoration, is an eighteenth century appropriation of the classical spirit; its subsequent replicas are the embodiment not of the classical, but of the

Neoclassical and therefore an embodiment of the Enlightenment spirit: “As

Chateaubriand argued in a famous passage from Génie du Christianisme (1802), ‘all men feel a secret attraction towards ruins’, because of a sense of the sublime evoked by the contrast between our human condition and the fall of great empires, to which the ruins bear witness.”192 As this “secret attraction towards ruins” was present in eighteenth century Europe, it is safe to say that it was a force felt in the British Empire during that period. It therefore is natural for an individual or a society, in this case the British

Empire, to try to appropriate those ruins and fill a kinship towards the ancient world, which is what they saw as their society’s ancestor. Effectively, the British Empire saw

190 E. H.Gombrich, “In Search of Cultural History,” in Ideals & Idols: Essay on values in history and in art, 24 – 59, (Oxford: UK: Clarendon Press, 1969), 26. 191 Ibid, 27. 192 Settis, The Future of the Classical, 77. Monahan 60 their society as a descendant of the greatness of the ancient empires. Subsequently, this appropriation is not out of line with the philosophical leanings of the period; rather it fits quite nicely into the zeitgeist.

The most important device at work is the idea of classicism, and the fact that highly developed, powerful civilizations co-opted it in order to assign to their own societies some sort of ancient lineage, appropriately at a juncture when their society is at an advanced cultural state Salvatore Settis discusses this in length in his text The Future of the Classical, and notes that the vague term “‘classical’ culture” is often projected

“onto a universal plane and in practice turns it into the weapon used with a degree of concealment by Western civilization to claim its superiority over other civilizations.”193

Western civilization in particular frequently uses ‘classical’ elements “to legitimize the

West’s hegemony over the rest of the world,”194 and the British Empire was not the only civilization to do so. Classical revivals occurred in Renaissance Italy, where the Papacy attempted to draw lineage from the ancient world, and much more recently, the Italian

Fascist Benito Mussolini drew inspiration from the ancient world in order to claim ancestry from the Roman Empire. As such a large, ‘classical’ object, The Warwick Vase represents the large hold that the British Empire had on the world in the early eighteenth century. It had enough power and prestige to appropriate and refashion an ancient object into its own, and to project the idea that the British Empire was deriving legacy from the ancient empires and their highly developed societies.

Kubler not only accounts for the idea of prime objects and replicas, but also theorizes why the replicas exist: “The replication that fills history actually prolongs the

193 Ibid, 3. 194 Ibid, 12. Monahan 61 stability of many past moments, allowing sense and pattern to emerge for us wherever we look.”195 This is clearly the case for The Warwick Vase and its replicas. Each time The

Warwick Vase is copied, it refers back to the prime object, The Warwick Vase, and what

The Warwick Vase embodies: the nostalgia for a time in history when the British Empire was the apex of society itself, in the fashion of how antiquities and ruins represent the climax of pre-modern history. Each time the replicas begin to proliferate the visual consciousness in the relatively small world of English decorative arts, there is an underlying social and political instability in the British Empire, most importantly in the decline of the aristocracy and the loss of the supreme nature of the British Empire. If we accept the notion that the ‘classical’ “cannot become functional without the dynamism of nostalgia or repetition,”196 we are accepting the fact that the subsequent replicas create the spirit of the prime object and inflect meaning onto it rather than the prime object creating its own meaning. Without the replicas, the original is just an object. It is the successive replicas that make the original a representation of the nationalism and spirit of what was arguably the apex of civilization in the modern era, the British Empire, because that object was made in the context of the spirit of the Enlightenment and of the supremacy of the British Empire.

The pervasiveness of the replicas of the Warwick Vase also demonstrates how certain objects and images become part of a cultural consciousness. Through representation on a mass produced item, the mimetic nature of the object makes it part of the culture – just as Mickey Mouse is seen on virtually every type of common object today – from cups to t-shirts to key chains - so was The Warwick Vase in the early

195 Kubler, “The Classing of Things, in The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, 31-53 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962), 71. 196 Settis, The Future of the Classical, 16. Monahan 62 nineteenth century. That being said, it is hard not to imply that The Warwick Vase does not embody some sort of national identity. Just as we can say Mickey Mouse represents the American capitalism and life in the twentieth century, The Warwick Vase represents

British Nationalism and the apex of the British Empire.

In 1977, just barely over two hundred years after fragments of The Warwick Vase were rescued from obscurity from the drained lake at Hadrian’s villa; the hybrid object was sold to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Interestingly, the British

Government saw the Warwick Vase was “part of the history of the decorative arts in the nineteenth century and is an important document in the history of British Taste and

Patronage”197 and the license to export was withheld. Until that time, the Warwick Vase had remained on the property of Warwick Castle. The government’s labeling of the

Warwick Vase as document, exemplifying the rich history of British “taste and patronage,” is what strikingly pushes the Warwick Vase into a different realm. It is not just a vase, but a symbol representing a cultural lineage that became an emblem for the upper classes of British society. The government does not withhold the license to export because of its aesthetics, but because of what its aesthetics represent. Notably, that appreciation for the vase came not from major arts institutions like the British Museum and The Victoria and Albert, but the government. It was not important enough of a piece to belong to those institutional collections, as its importance was not that of art, but of what it represented as a national symbol and the subsequent copies that it spawned in the realm of the decorative arts. Eventually, enough money was raised so that the vase could

197 Marks & Blench, “The Warwick Vase,” 141. Monahan 63 be sold to the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1977 for £250,000.198

This subsequent reaffirmation of The Warwick Vase raises many questions: why was it sold in the first place? Why does the British government, at this juncture in time, need to keep The Warwick Vase within the confines of the United Kingdom? It seems as if this is a new appropriation of the form, and clearly demonstrates that the form became a symbol of nationalism that referred to the prestige and grandeur of eighteenth-century

Britain. Even Warwick Castle eventually regretted its sale: they had a replica made of fiberglass that now resides in the greenhouse originally built to house the Warwick Vase.

Clearly, this form is an important representation of British national heritage, and through that, the form itself a symbol of nationalism.

As Settis notes, “Not only do ruins challenge time, they also inspire reflections and reactions. Thus they can be looked upon and acquire status in a new codified role as precisely what they have become – ruins.”199 The Warwick Vase was an assembled object, made from 24 fragments and reassembled.200 The ruins that were used to create it allowed for it to do as Settis suggests - “challenge time” and “inspire reflections and reactions.” The British were placing their own thoughts and ideas into these ruins, and rebuilding them for their own purposes and directions. Since they are ruins, they somehow have a place in time and can be made to be representational of a society’s sentiment. Through the many iterations of its form, the object itself became a symbol of the past, a ruin of a particular place in time - eighteenth century classical ideals, that were highly regarded by British society. This “ruin” was repeated and copied, making it an

198 Matthews, “Four Nineteenth Century Garden Ornaments,” 279. 199 Settis, The Future of the Classical, 77. 200 Opper, “Glory of Rome Restored,” 39. Monahan 64 icon of that time and place, and symbolic of its meaning.

Essentially, the idea behind classical theory, as explained by Settis, pushes the idea that the Warwick Vase is a document, representational of British nationalism, sentiment, and nostalgia through its replication.. The proposed removal of the object from the United Kingdom clearly “inspired reflections and reactions,” most stemming from the populace and not the art community, forcing its way into the realm of a national symbol.

The appropriation of ancient ruins and the creation of The Warwick Vase led to a huge class of decorative arts objects that projected British nationalism. While the physical function or non-function of the replica objects are vastly different – Warwick

Vases appear in the form of wine coolers, ice pails, garden ornaments, sporting trophies, and decorative vases – they all share a symbolic function, evoking the memory and nostalgia of a past era. The prime object, The Warwick Vase, is representational of the apex of the British Empire. The vase attempts to derive the lineage of the Empire from the ancient world by using fragments of antiquities in a fantasy object of a large scale.

The subsequent replicas dating to the Regency period reflect the initial decline of the

British Empire, and represent a way that the elites, including the royals, were attempting to hold on to what they had. The subsequent mid-century mass-produced items such as

Spode plates and cement garden ornaments reflect The Warwick Vase’s jump into the realm of representational of British culture as a whole. Additionally, it is indicative of its pervasiveness throughout the material and visual culture of the period. The subsequent revival of The Warwick Vase in the Edwardian period, when the aristocracy was in heavy decline, revives its placement as a symbol of British Nationalism and the nostalgia for Monahan 65 what was the British Empire. The late twentieth century effort to keep the vase in the

United Kingdom as a piece of cultural heritage shows how much the replicas infiltrated the visual culture of the British Empire, and how they represent a legacy and embody the memory of the height of its prosperity and dominance. All of these stylistic revivals, and the subsequent recurrence of a single form, that of The Warwick Vase, demonstrate the idea that a single form can embody values that are important to the society it is created in.

Monahan 66

Appendix

Figure 1: The Warwick Vase in situ.

Figure 2: Altra Veduta del già descritto Vaso from Vasi, candelabir, cippi, sarcofagi…., Giovanni Battista Piranesi, etching on paper, 1768 – 1778.

Monahan 67

Figure 3: A Pair of Derby Imari Warwick Vases, circa 1820, Derby Porcelain Manufactory.

Figure 4: A George III Silver Warwick Vase and Plinth, 1812, Paul Storr, silver. Christie’s object ID: 5316079.

Monahan 68

Figure 5: A George III Silver Warwick Vase and Plinth, 1812, Paul Storr for Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, silver. Christie’s Object ID 5322492.

Figure 6: A Pair of George III Silver Wine Collers, Collars, and Liners, 1819, Paul Storr for Green & Ward, silver. Christie’s Object ID: 5150383.

Monahan 69

Figure 7: A Worcester (Flight, Barr & Barr) Porcelain Burgundy-Ground Two-Handled ‘Warwick’ Vase, 1807-1813, porcelain. Christie’s Object ID: 5607813.

Figure 8: Vase, Flight, Barr & Barr (Worcester), ca. 1820, porcelain. The Victoria and Albert Museum. Monahan 70

Figure 9: Two Worcester (Flight, Barr & Barr) Porcelain Vases on a Fixed Stand, 1804- 1813, porcelain. Christie’s Object ID: 1982795.

Figure 10: Warwick Vase in situ at Cambridge. Monahan 71

Figure 11: A Victorian Terracotta Model of the Warwick Vase and Pedestal, terracotta, Mark Henry Blanchard, 1860. Christie’s ID: 5069122.

Monahan 72

Figure 12: Warwick Vase in situ in the Oxford Botanical Gardens, William Henry Fox Talbot.

Figure 13: A Pair of Victorian Terracotta Models of the Warwick Vase and Albani Vases, terracotta, second half of the 19th century. Christie’s Object ID: 5460960

Monahan 73

Figure 14: A Pair of Victorian Terracotta Models of the Warwick and Albani Vases, terracotta, J. M.Blashfield, second half of the 19th century. Christie’s Object ID: 5693806

Figure 15: An Italian Green-Serpentine Marble Model of the Warwick Vase, circa 1880, marble. Christie’s ID: 4703032

Monahan 74

Figure 16: Ascot Gold Cup, 1897-98, James Garrard, silver gilt. The Royal Collection, UK.

Figure 17: An Edward VII Silver Model of the Warwick Vase, 1909, Carrington & Co, silver & ebonized wood. Christie’s Object ID: 5440397.

Monahan 75

Figure 18: A Portuguese Porcelain Green-Ground Two-Handled Vase and Cover, 20th Century, porcelain. Christie’s Object ID: 4325629

Monahan 76

Bibliography

“Ascot Cup.” The Art Institute of Chicago. www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/ 55515?search_no=1&index=44 (accessed November 29, 2013).

“Ascot Gold Cup.” The Royal Collection Trust. http://www.royalcollection.org.uk. collection/50272/ascot-gold-cup-1897 (accessed November 29, 2013).

Bignamini, Illaria. “Antiquaries and antiquarian societies,” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. http://www.oxfordartoline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T003248 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Bignamini, Illaria and Clare Hornsby. Digging and Dealing in Eighteenth-Century Rome. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

Bremner, G. Alex. “’Some Imperial Institute’: Architecture, Symbolism, and the Ideal of Empire in Late Victorian Britain, 1887-93.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 63, no. 1 (March 2003), 50-73.

Cannadine, David. The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. New York: Vintage, 1999.

Christie’s. “A Gilt and Lacquered Bronze Model of the Warwick Vase.” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= (accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “A George III Silver Warwick Vase and Plinth.” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 5316079 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “A George III Silver Warwick Vase and Plinth.” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 5322492 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “A Modern Silver-Gilt Two-Handled Cup and Cover.” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 1999623 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “An Edward VII Silver Model of the Warwick Vase.” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 5440397 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “An Italian Green-Serpentine Marble Model of the Warwick Vase. www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 4703032 Monahan 77

(accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “A Pair of Bronze Models of the Warwick Vase.” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 4805422 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “A Pair of Debry Imari ‘Warwick’ Vases,” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 4047923 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “A Pair of George III Silver Wine Coolers, Collars and Liners.” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 5150383 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “A Pair of Victorian Terracotta Models of the Warwick and Albani Vases,” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 5460960 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “A Pair of Victorian Terracotta Models of the Warwick and Albani Vases,” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 5693806 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “A Silvered Bronze Copy of the Warwick Vase.” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 5701268(accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “A Silver Jardinière of Warwick Vase Form.” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 5434233 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “A Victorian Terracotta Model of the Warwick Vase and Pedestal.” www.chrities.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID= 5069122 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Christie’s. “A Worcester (Flight, Barr & Barr) Porcelain Burgundy-Ground Two- Handled ‘Warwick’ Vase.” www.christies.com/lotfinder/LotDetails Printable.aspx ?intObjectID=5607813 (accessed September 22, 2013)

Christie’s. “Two Worcester (Flight, Barr & Barr) Porcelain Vases on a Fixed Stand.” www.christies.com /lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=1982795 (accessed September 22, 2013).

Coburn, Frederick W. “Trophies.” Art and Progress 3, no. 11 (September 1912), 711- 713.

Collard, Frances. “Historical Revivals, Commercial Enterprise and Public Confusions: Monahan 78

Negotiating Taste, 1860-1890.” Journal of Design History 16, no. 1 (2003), 35- 48.

Danalakis, Katherine. “The Warwick Vase.” In Vasemania, edited by Stefanie Walker, 33-34, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Downs, Joseph. “Georgian Decorative Art.” Bulletin of the Philadelphia Museum 26 no. 139 (1931): 7.

Erickson, Carrolly. Our Tempestuous Day: A History of Regency England. New York: Harper, 2011.

Gervais, Christine. “Pair of Corner Cabinets.” In Rienzi: European Decorative Arts and Paintings by Katherine S. Howe, 90. London: Scala Publishers Ltd. And the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2008.

Gombrich, E.H. “In Search of Cultural History.” In Ideals & Idols: Essay on values in history and in art, 24 – 59, Oxford, UK: Phaidon Press, 1969.

Hartop, Christopher. Royal Goldsmiths: The Art of Rundell and Bridge, 1797-1843. Cambridge: John Adamson for Koopman Rare Art, 2005.

Hibbert, Christopher. George IV: The Rebel Who Would be King. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Howe, Katherine S. “Pair of Wine Coolers. In Rienzi: European Decorative Arts and Paintings, 103.

Howe, Katherine S. “Paul Storr, London Silversmith.” In Rienzi: European Decorative Arts and Paintings, 102.

Jenkins, Ian and Kim Sloan. Vases & Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection. London: British Museum Press, 1996.

Johansen, Sylvi. “The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Precipice in Time?” Victorian Review 22 no. 1 (Summer 1996), 59-64.

Johns, Christopher M.S. “Visual Culture and the Triumph of Cosmopolitanism in Eighteenth-century Rome.” In Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-century Rome. Edited by David R. Marshall, Susan Russell and Karin Wolfe, 13-22. London: The British School at Rome, 2011.

Jordan, Mark. “Neoclassicism.” The Oxford Companion to Western Art. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordartonline.com /subscriber/article/opr/t118/e1862 (accessed November 22, 2013).

Monahan 79

Kubler, George. “The Classing of Things.” In The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, 31-53. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962.

Lambert, David. “The Meaning and Re-meaning of Sculpture in Victorian Public Parks.” In Sculpture and the Garden, edited by Patrick Eyres and Fiona Russell, 99-110. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.

Leoncini, Luca. “The Torlonia Vase: History and Visual Records from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 54 (1991), 99-116.

Marks, Richard and Brian J. R. Blench. The Warwick Vase. Glasgow: Burrell Collection, Glasgow Museums and Art Galleries, 1979.

Marshall, David R. and Karin Wolfe. “Roma Britannica.” In Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-century Rome, 3-12.

Matthews, Joanna. “Four Nineteenth-Century Garden Ornaments in the Oxford Botanic Garden.” Garden History 33, no. 3 (Autumn, 2005): 274-285.

Opper, Thorsten. “Glory of Rome Restored.” British Museum Magazine: Journal of the British Museum Society (2005): 38-40.

Ottomeyer, Hans. “The Metamorphosis of the Neoclassical Vase.” In Vasemaina, 15-30.

Patterson, Annabel. “Pastoral and Ideology: The Neoclassical Fête Champêtr.” Huntington Library Quarterly 48, no. 4 (autumn, 1985): 321 – 344.

“Photograph of the Botanic Garden, Oxford.” Inventory No. 31601. Museum of the History of Science, Oxford University. http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk (accessed November 12, 2013).

Pointon, Marcia. “Jewellery in eighteenth-century England.” In Consumers and Luxury: Consumer culture in Europe edited by Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford, 120 -146, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999.

Raizman, David. “Entrepreneurial Efforts in Britain and Elsewhere,” in History of Modern Design, Second Edition, 31-39. Uppdersaddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2011.

Raizman, David. “Design, Society, and Standards” in History of Modern Design, 57-77.

Raizman, David. “The Joy of Work,” in History of Modern Design, 80-102.

Reeve, John. “Grand Tour,” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Monahan 80

http://www.oxfordartonline.com: 80/subscriber/article/gorve/art/T034048 (accessed September 30, 2013).

“Royal Ascot History & Tradition.” Royal Ascot. http://www.ascot.co.uk/royal-ascot- 2014/gold-cup=day (accessed November 29, 2013).

Sandon, John. The Dictionary of Worcester Porcelain, Volume 1: 1751-1851. Woodbridge: The Antique Collectors Club, 1993.

Schmiechen, James A. “The Victorians, the Historians, and the Idea of Modernism.” The American Historical Review 93, no. 3 (April 1988), 287-316.

Schroder, Timothy. The National Trust Book of English Domestic Silver 1500-1900. London: Butler & Tanner, Ltd., 1988.

Service, Alistair. “Edwardian Style.” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article /grove/art/T024965 (accessed November 12, 2013).

Settis, Salvatore. The Future of the Classical. Translated by Allan Camaron. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006.

Sørensen, Bent. “Piranesi, Grandjacquet and the Warwick Vase.” The Burlington Magazine 145, no. 1208 (November 2003): 792-795.

Sotheby’s. “Lot 82: King Albert: An Important Edward II Silver-Gilt Warwick Vase on Stand.”http://ww.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2003/the-estate-of-hrh- the-late-princess-lilian-of-belgium-am0896/lot.82.html, (accessed December 2, 2013).

Stephenson, Andrew. “Edwardian Cosmopolitism, ca.1901-1912.” In The Edwardian Sense: Art, Design, and Performance in Britain, 1901-1910, 251-284, edited by Morna O’Neill and Micahel Hatt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

Taylor, Miles. “The 1848 Revolutions and the British Empire.” Past & Present, no. 166 (February 2000), 146-180.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “A Pair of Vases.” www.metmuseum.org/toah/works- of-art/1982.4a,b_1988.199 (accessed November 2, 2013).

The Royal Collection Trust. “Two Ice Pails.” http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/50811/two-ice-pails (accessed October 8, 2013).

“The Warwick Vase.” The Burlington Magazine 121, no. 912 (March 1979): 141 + 186.

Monahan 81

Udy, David. “Piranesi’s ‘Vasi’, The English Silversmith and His Patrons.” The Burlington Magazine 120, no. 909 (December 1978): 820 + 822-835 + 837.

Walker, Stefanie. “The Hamilton Collection and Its Influence.” In Vasemania, 31-32.

Wees, Beth Carver. “Ancient Rome via the Erie Canal: The De Witt Clinton Vases.” Metropolitan Museum Journal 42 (2007), 139-162.

Wood, Elizabeth Ingerman. “Thomas Fletcher A Philadelphia Entrepreneur of Presentation Silver.” Winterthur Portfolio 3 (1967): 136-171.

Yorke, James. “Regency and Empire” in Silver: History and Design. Edited by Philippa Glanville, 50-53. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1996.