{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O377111"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O377111/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2015HX5994/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2015HX5994/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2015HX5994","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2015HX5995","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2015HX5996","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2015HX5997","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2015HX5998","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2017KE2638","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O377111/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O377111","accessionNumber":"397-1872","objectType":"Vase","titles":[],"summaryDescription":"Carved stone vessels, prized since Antiquity, became more valuable by the addition of mounts. Many survive in church treasuries. This vase, possibly from the Cathedral treasury of Sens (Burgundy), was perhaps originally a ewer. Damage to the lower side suggests a lost attachment for a handle. Suger, abbot of the Royal Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, near Paris, recorded in 1144-49 his purchase of mounted crystal vases and a chalice of sardonyx for services there.","physicalDescription":"Vase, agate, silver gilt mounts. The vase is long and narrow with a swelling oval body. The base and the rim are moulded, and the neck is separated from the body by a moulding. The mounts consist of two horizontal bands of metal, each in two sections hinged together, one fitted under the moulding at the foot of the neck, and one fitted above the moulded base, each horizontal band joined by four vertical hinged bands.Each band engraved with different ornament on a circular punched ground.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Unknown","id":"A1848"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"agate","id":"AAT11135"},{"text":"silver","id":"AAT11029"},{"text":"gold","id":"AAT11021"}],"techniques":[{"text":"carving","id":"AAT53149"},{"text":"engraving","id":"AAT53829"},{"text":"gilding","id":"AAT53789"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Agate; Silver, engraved and gilded","categories":[{"text":"Metalwork","id":"THES48920"}],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"MET","id":"THES48599"},"images":["2015HX5994","2015HX5995","2015HX5996","2015HX5997","2015HX5998","2017KE2638"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"008","id":"THES404815"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"vase","id":"AAT132254"}],[{"text":"ewer","id":"AAT45666"}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"No","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"France","id":"x28849"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":"mounts"},{"place":{"text":"Roman Empire","id":"x29105"},"association":{"text":"carved","id":"AAT53149"},"note":"carved agate vase; possibly also Sasanian (modern Iran, Iraq and part of Western Asia)"}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1100-1200","earliest":"1100-01-01","latest":"1200-12-31"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":"the mounts are twelfth century; the vase is 7th century at the latest"},{"date":{"text":"250-450","earliest":"0250-01-01","latest":"0450-12-31"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":""},{"date":{"text":"226-651","earliest":"0226-01-01","latest":"0651-12-31"},"association":{"text":"","id":""},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"20.4","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"9.7","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"A Parisian curiosity dealer, M. Couvreur, had attempted unsuccessfully to sell the vase to the Museum's art referee John Charles Robinson in the 1850s. The dealer and collector John Webb (also an art referee for the South Kensington Museum) later bought the piece from Couvreur, and in 1863 successfully sold it to the South Kensington Museum. It was presumably Couvreur who supplied the information Robinson cites in his memo in support of the purchase. This states the vase had come from the Cathedral treasury of Sens, and although it had been removed from there during the French Revolution in 1789, it had remained in Sens almost until the time it was taken to Paris by Couvreur. This provenance information was overlooked when the vase entered the Museum (see Lightbown: 1978, p. 4) and the mounts were catalogued as German work of the sixteenth century. In fact, the generic nature of the mounts makes identification of their place of origin difficult; they are now identified as French because the object is said to have been in France for centuries. The date and provenance of the agate vase these mounts enclose is also difficult to establish. Agate is a hardstone which has been prized and carved into vessels since Antiquity, and after the break-up of the Roman Empire the practice continued in the Sasanian Empire (modern Iran, Iraq and part of Western Asia) and later in the Islamic world. A small number of hardstone vases and ewers with bodies of similar form to the V&amp;A one survive in the Louvre, the treasury of St Mark's Cathedral, Venice, and among the collection of hardstone vessels assembled in the fifteenth century by Piero and Lorenzo de' Medici in the Pitti Palace, Florence. Their origin and date has been the subject of discussion. In the catalogue which accompanied a 1972 exhibition of these Medici treasures, Detlef Heikamp (1974: p. 108) suggested a late-Antique or Sasanian origin for a sardonyx ewer with a zoomorphic handle, no lip and a body of very similar form to the V&amp;A vase, but he was unwilling to commit himself to a date or place of origin for the piece. Daniel Alcouffe (1984: pp. 90-95) argued that the Medici sardonyx ewer was an example of Sasanian workmanship because of its resemblance to Sasanian metalwork (among the parallels he cites is a bronze Sasanian ewer in the V&amp;A, M.27-1945, which has a handle in the form of an elongated monster). Alcouffe's attribution of the Medici ewer was echoed in a recent study of the piece (Mosco: 2004, pp. 32 and fig. 1). Other scholars have proposed an even later date and a potentially Islamic origin for the Medici piece. Von Gladiss ((2002), p. 79) compared the form of the Medici sardonyx ewer to a gold one included in the grave discovered in 1912 at Pereshchepyna (near Poltava, Ukraine, and now in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg), and argued for a possible Islamic origin as well as a Sasanian one for the Medici vase, which he suggested could be of seventh or eighth century date. On the other hand, there is no evidence to suggest the V&amp;A vase was carved with a distinctive zoomorphic handle, and so a late-Antique origin and date may still be a possibility. Abrasions round the rim of the V&amp;A vase suggest it had a rim-mount at an early stage, and this could have been connected to a fixing for a handle on the lower part of the vessel, where repairs to a small hole are visible. The 'vase', then, may once have been mounted as a ewer. \nThe addition of mounts to carved hardstone vessels in later centuries showed how these objects were valued and embellished to make them even more precious. A well-known instance of twelfth-century appreciation for such objects appears in the 1144-49 account by Abbot Suger of his reconstruction of French royal chapel at Saint-Denis (on the outskirts of Paris). Suger records how he 'deposited [in the treasury] the little crystal vases which we had assigned to the daily service in our [private] chapel. And further we adapted for the service of the altar, with the aid of gold and silver material, a porphyry vase, made admirable by the hand of the sculptor and polisher, after it had lain idly in a chest for many years' (Suger, ed. Panofsky: 1979, 'De Administratione', p. 79; for images of surviving chalices, ewers and vases from the chapel, see <u>Le trésor de Saint-Denis</u>: 1991).","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"vase or ewer, agate, late-Antique (250-450 CE, Roman Empire) or Sasanian Empire (226-651, modern Iran, Iraq and part of Western Asia); gilded silver mounts, 1100-1200, possibly French","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Lightbown, Ronald W. <u>French Silver</u>. London: HMSO, 1978. ISBN 0112902502*"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Alcouffe, Daniel. Catalogue entry 'Agate ewer with zoomorphic handle', In: <u>The Treasury of San Marco, Venice</u>, ed. by David Buckton with assistance from Christopher Entwistle and Rowena Prior. [Catalogue of an exhibition held at the British Museum and also shown at the Grand Palais, Paris (organised by the Reunion des musées nationaux de Paris) and at Metropolitan Museum, New York.] Milan: Olivetti, 1984"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Alcouffe, Daniel, ed. <u>Le trésor de Saint-Denis</u>. [Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, 12 March - 17 June 1991]. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1991. ISBN 2711823504"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Arbeta Mira, Letizia, ed. <u>El tesoro del Delfin: alhajas de Felipe V recibidas por herencia de su padre Luis, gran Delfin de Francia</u>. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2001. ISBN: 8484800245"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"<u>Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of Saint Denis and its art treasures</u>, ed. and transl. by Erwin Panofsky. 2nd edn. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Lapatin, Kenneth. <u>Luxus. The Sumptuous Arts of Greece and Rome</u>. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2015. ISBN 9781606064221"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Westgarth, Mark. <u>A biographical dictionary of nineteenth century antique and curiosity dealers</u>. Regional Furniture Society: 2009. ISSN: 0953-0800"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Mosco, Marilena. 'Lorenzo the Magnificent. Vases'. <u>In</u>: Marilena Mosco and Ornella Casazza, eds, <u>The Museo degli Argenti. Collections and Collectors</u>. Florence: Giunti, 2004. ISBN 8809037936"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Von Gladiss, A. Catalogue entry, in Giovanna Damiani and Mario Scalini, eds,  <u>Islam, specchio d'Oriente. Rarità e preziosi nelle collezioni statali fiorentine</u>. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 23 April - 1 September 2002. Livorno: Sillabe, 2002. "},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"<u>Il Tesoro di Lorenzo il Magnifico</u>. Catalogue of the exhibition at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, 1972. 2 vols, II: Detlef Heikamp, ed., <u>Il tesoro di Lorenzo il Magnifico: I vasi</u>. Florence: Sansoni Editori, 1974."}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[{"text":"Vase or Ewer\r\n250–651; mounts 1100–1200\nPrized since ancient times, carved stone vessels were made more valuable by the addition of metal mounts. Many such pieces survive in church treasuries, this one possibly coming from the cathedral treasury of Sens (Burgundy). Damage to the lower side suggests there was once a handle. In the 1140s Suger, the abbot of the Royal Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, near Paris, recorded how he commissioned mounts for vases of porphyry and sardonyx.\r\nRoman Empire or Sasanian Empire\r\nAgate\r\nMounts: possibly France; gilded silver\r\nMuseum no. 397-1872","date":{"text":"04/01/2016","earliest":"2016-01-04","latest":"2016-01-04"}},{"text":"VASE\r\nOnyx, mounted in engraved silver-gilt\r\n(One strap a modern renewal)\r\nThe vase probably Oriental; the mounting German; 12th century","date":{"text":"1980-2003","earliest":"1980-01-01","latest":"2003-12-31"}}],"partNumbers":["397-1872"],"accessionNumberNum":"397","accessionNumberPrefix":"","accessionYear":1872,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":["2019LW9161"],"recordModificationDate":"2026-05-12","recordCreationDate":"2009-06-24","availableToBook":true}}