Large tazza in Swedish porphyry

Blyberg porphyry.
Sweden.
ca. 1820–1825.
38 x 43 x 43 cm (14.96 x 16.93 x 16.93 in).

This large tazza in porphyry, distinguished by its particularly tall pieduccio and broad, shallow bowl, belongs to the productions of the Älvdalen Porphyry Works, where the Swedish porphyry deposits first discovered in 1731 by Eric Näsman, the local parish pastor, began to be systematically exploited in the late 1780s under the technical direction of Eric Hagström.

The present tazza does not appear to belong to the first phase of production at Älvdalen, typically characterised by smaller dimensions and a more sober profile. None of the models included in the earliest known catalogue of the manufactory, distributed in France in 1805, exhibits a comparable shape. This example seems rather to correspond to a second phase of production that began in the second decade of the nineteenth century, during the reign of Bernadotte. His accession in 1818 marked a decisive moment for the porphyry workshops of Älvdalen : that same year, the workshops became royal property, and it was under his patronage that numerous official and monumental gifts in Swedish porphyry were commissioned for sovereigns and dignitaries across Europe. It is during this period that the production of large-scale vases, urns, and fonts in Swedish porphyry flourished —such as the monumental Blyberg amphora at Stockholm Palace, the baptismal fonts in the same stone offered by Bernadotte to the Catholic church in Stockholm, and above all the monumental tazza at Rosendal Palace. Like the fonts and the offered tazza, the Rosendal vase is notable for its unusually tall pieduccio, which accounts for more than half of its total height.

A smaller “urn” in granitella from Garberg — a quarry neighbouring the Blyberg deposits — displays a similarly elevated profile, in which the height of the pieduccio nearly equals that of the bowl. This urn was dated ca. 1820 in the catalogue of the Porphyre. Pierre royale exhibition held at the Swedish Cultural Centre in Paris in 1990. Taken together with the dates of the Rosendal vase and the Blyberg fonts, both produced during Bernadotte’s reign, this comparison allows us to situate the present tazza in the early years of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, between 1820 and 1825.

Sources

Hans Sundblom and Ingemar Tunander, Porphyre. La Pierre royale, Trelleborg, 1990; Ha?kan Groth, Neoclassicism in the North: Swedish Furniture and Interiors, 1770–1850, New York, 1990; Philippe Malgouyres and Clément Blanc-Riehl, Porphyre: La Pierre pourpre des Ptolémées aux Bonaparte, Paris, 2003.