A Pair of Louis-Philippe Campana Urns on Pedestals

An attractive pair of campana-form urns raised on matching square pedestals, executed in the tradition of the French Empire and its immediate successors. The bodies and pedestals are veneered in verde antico-style marble with characteristic dark green ground and white veining. The mounts are cast gilt bronze throughout, comprising a beaded and acanthus rim collar, bold acanthus-wrapped scroll handles, a pierced acanthus calyx to the lower body, a gadrooned and fluted baluster socle, and acanthus frieze to the plinth base, raised on four melon-gadrooned ball feet.

The campana form derived from the antique crater and popularised in France during the Napoleonic era remained fashionable throughout the Louis-Philippe period, and pairs of this type were widely produced for the prosperous bourgeois interior of the 1830s and 1840s.

French, circa 1840
Height (urn and pedestal): 56 cm

Condition: Overall good decorative condition consistent with age.

Literature:
Alcouffe, Dion-Tenenbaum & Lefébure, Un âge d'or des arts décoratifs 1814–1848, Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, 1991 for comparable gilt bronze mounted marble objects of the Restoration and Louis-Philippe periods
Kjellberg, Pierre, Le Mobilier Français du XIXe Siècle, Les Éditions de l'Amateur, Paris, 1987 for the broader decorative arts context of the period.