A PAIR OF ORMOLU ORNAMENTAL EWERS

The golden garniture of clodionesque ewers, wreathed by Jupiter'’s sacred oak, are of wine-krater form with handles of bacchic serpents. These rim guardians also serve to bind the heads of chimerical ram-horned dolphins above ribbon-bands, whose bas-reliefs evoke the banquets of the gods with the crowning of the Arcadian satyr Pan and a bacchante. Designs, in the manner of Clodion (d.1814), for related vases with serpent and horned dolphin handles were in the collection of Hippolyte Destailleur (d.1892), and are discussed, together with the bronzes d'’ameublement of the Parisian ondoeur i of Ferdinand Barbedienne (d.1892) in Anne L. Poulet, Clodion, Paris, 1992, no. 5.