The Wedgwood Portland Vase has gained continuing fame among connoisseurs over the past 200 years – during which time numerous editions have been produced- and symbolically it is at the very heart of the Company’s identity.

Shortly before closing time on 7^th February 1845 at the British Museum in London, a ‘stout young man’ shattered one of the most famous artefacts from the ancient world into some 200 fragments. The culprit was detained and later arrested and taken to Bow Street police station. This nineteenth century vandal, who gave his name as William Lloyd, could offer no valid reason for damaging the work of art, other than that he had been ‘indulging in intemperance for the week before’.

First edition copy of the Portland Vase formerly owned by Thomas Hope. Date 1793

The classic gem was the Barberini Vase, one of the finest examples of ancient cameo glass in the world, and the inspiration for the Wedgwood Portland Vase. A copy of Josiah’s ceramic masterpiece was used by the British Museum’s restorer as a guideline to re-assembling the hundreds of pieces of the vase back to its former glory.

The circumstances of the vandalism were graphically reported a week later in the ‘Illustrated London News’ complete with illustrations of the decorative bas-relief figures. The publicity stirred widespread interest and the Wedgwood factory reacted quickly by producing a range of Portland Vase memorabilia – small ornamental pieces – in competition with other ceramic manufacturers who saw the opportunity of a profitable ‘commemorative’ line.

The Barberini or Portland Vase probably originated in Rome at the hands of craftsmen trained in Alexandria, Egypt, where cameo-glass manufacturing techniques were first practiced.

The bas-relief figures around the circumference of the vase have long intrigued art historians. The current favoured theory is that the scene depicts the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis (mother of Achilles) – an apt subject, as it is believed that the vase could well have been made to celebrate a wedding.

The foot of the vase sustained damage in antiquity, and a replacement disc of a classical male study was attached. Probably the disc was ground-down from a larger plaque of a slightly later date. The figure is said to depict ‘Silence’ or, more probably, ‘Paris’ who was called upon to arbitrate between the charms of Hera, Athena and Aphrodite – a contest which proved to be the initiation of the Trojan Wars.

Phrygian Cap – The ornamentation on the base of the vase.

The earliest record of the Barberini Vase can be traced back to the 16^th century, when it was noted as being at the Palazzo Madama, in the possession of Cardinal del Monte, who purchased it around 1582.

When the Cardinal died in 1627, the vase was acquired by Cardinal Francesco Barberini, hence its name.

The vase was later described in Girolamo Tetzi’s ‘Aedes Barberinae’, published in 1642 to celebrate the building of Pope Urban VIII’s, and his nephew Cardinal Francesco Barberini’s, new palace on the Quirinal at Rome. Displayed in the library of that spectacular building, it was described in the following passage:

“… the eye is particularly caught by a sepulchral urn, of a palm and a half, - of encaustic work, of a violet colour, most beautifully executed by the hand of the artist, and so transparent that you would think it a native amethyst. Its mouth is neither narrow, nor very wide: it has two handles, and no cover: its capacity is about half a gallon; the belly oblong encompassed with white figures, which are encaustic like the ground and so beautiful that you would affirm them to have been elaborated by the hand of Phidias”

From 1627-1780 the vase resided in the Palace at Rome. Over the next four years the artefact changed ownership, location and destination with some frequency. The first re-location was necessitated by the large gambling debts of the Princess of Palestrina, Donna Cornelia Barberini Colonna.

A Scotsman, James Byres, who was then resident in Rome, acquired the vase from her. A knowledgeable antiquarian and erstwhile architect, Byres had no intention of retaining the piece. He did, however, have a ‘master’ cast taken from it and then prevailed upon James Tassie, glass gem producer and fellow Scot, to produce 60 copies in plaster for ‘posterity’. One such cast is in the collection of the British Museum, London, England.

White on blue Jasper portrait medallion of Sir William Hamilton. 18^th century

By 1783, with work completed, Byres re-sold the Barberini Vase to Sir William Hamilton, Ambassador to the Court of Naples, who indulged actively in his passion for archaeology and the amassing of ancient artefacts.

Hamilton had impoverished himself to the tune of £1,000 to gain possession of the vase. As he later, and perhaps more wisely, confided in a letter written to Josiah Wedgwood:

“…though God knows it was not very convenient for me at that moment…”

In view of his impecunious state, Hamilton and the vase reluctantly had to part company. Following a series of delicate and protracted negotiations with the Dowager Duchess of Portland the vase once again acquired a new owner, exchanging hands along with ‘three other antiquities’ for £2,000.

Before selling the vase, Hamilton proudly displayed it to notables and cogniscenti of the day. On 5^th February 1784, John Flaxman, artist and sculptor, wrote in haste to Josiah Wedgwood:

“I wish you may soon come to Town to see William Hamilton’s vase, it is the finest production of Art… & seems to be the very apex of perfection to which you are endeavouring to bring your bisque and Jasper; It is of the kind called ‘Murrina’ by Pliny, made of dark blue glass with white enamel figures.”

On 11^th March that year, Hamilton also displayed the vase to the Society of Antiquaries, where it was declared that ‘Sir William Hamilton was pleased to produce for the Inspection of the Society a Vase singularly curious brought by him from Italy and purchased there at a great Expense. It is called, by way of Excellence and Distinction, the Barberini Vase, having been many years in [the] possession of that Noble Family, and considered by them, and all Travellers of Taste and Judgement … of extraordinary Curiosity and Value.’

The Dowager Duchess of Portland who had been referred to by Horace Walpole as ‘a simple woman, but perfectly sober and intoxicated only by empty vases’, frequently entertained at the Bulstrode Park residence King George III, Queen Charlotte and their family. Like moths to a candle, many eminent people were attracted to this notable lady. Sir Joseph Banks, Elizabeth Montagu, David Garrick and Dr. Johnson were numbered among her close friends.

The Duchess of Portland, an engraved portrait from the Collection of Buckinghamshire County Museum

Image by kind permission of the Buckinghamshire County Museum www.buckscc.gov.uk/museum

The Duchess’s prime passions were for art, literature – and her beloved botanical gardens and natural history collections. She was a munificent patron, and the acquisition of the Barberini Vase in 1784 was the crowning glory of her collecting habits of nearly half a century. She promptly secreted the relic within her exclusive Portland Museum – but was to live less than a year to enjoy her prized possession.

When the auction of the contents of the Portland Museum was announced undoubtedly Josiah Wedgwood’s hopes soared. It would perhaps be possible ultimately to achieve possession of the vase, and to emulate its form in his new and revolutionary Jasper ornamental body – a ceramic achievement he had laboured long and hard for.

However, Lot 4155 of the 38-day sale was destined to remain in the hands of the Portland family. The vase was purchased by Mr. Charles Tomlinson, acting agent for third Duke of Portland – one of the Duchess’ children.

Sold for 980 guineas (£1,029) the vase was soon loaned by the new owner, the third Duke, to Josiah for the purposes of emulating its form and decoration in Jasper. Wedgwood was jubilant. But he was soon to discover that the task in hand was to prove extremely difficult, if not, he thought, insurmountable. For nearly four years Wedgwood, his son Josiah II, and several of the foremost artists and modellers of the day – including Henry Webber and William Hackwood – experimented and produced trials. Wedgwood commenced a new ‘crop’ of experiments to perfect the Jasper body even further, but lamented long and loud in his correspondence about his self-imposed ambitions.

He wrote ruefully to Sir William Hamilton on 24^th June 1786 (just two weeks after obtaining the vase):

“When I first engaged in this work, and had Montfaucon only to copy, I proceeded with spirit, on sufficient assurance that I should be able to equal, or excel, if permitted, that copy of the vase; but now that I can indulge myself with full and repeated examinations of the original work itself, my crest is much fallen.”

Bringing Jasper to the pinnacle of perfection necessary to emulate the vitrified surface of the original was to prove an immense challenge. His modellers produced exquisite working moulds of the bas-relief figures – but as Wedgwood discussed in a letter to Sir William Hamilton:

“ But my great work is the Portland Vase. I have now finished a third and last edition of the figures…my present difficulty is to give those beautiful shades to the thin and distant parts of the figures, for which the original artist availed himself of the semi-transparency of the white glass, cutting it down nearer and nearer to the blue ground, in proportion as he wished to increase the depth of shade. But the case is very different with me.

I must depend upon an agent, whose efforts are neither at my command, nor to be perceived at the time they are produced. Viz, the action of fire upon my compositions… I am now engaged in a course of experiments for determining these points with as much precision as the nature of the case will admit of.”

Even after the production of a successful vase around September 1789 – the first of his famed ‘First Edition’ – Wedgwood was still engaged in active experimentation – never once contemplating resting on his “ceramic laurels”. On 2^nd May 1790 he wrote at some length to his son Josiah II from the Wedgwood Showrooms at Portland House, Greek Street, London, discussing ‘surface cracking’.

“Two trials of Barberini black. With respect to colour, they are very much alike & both very nearly the same as the vase I have with me. But in another respect, the total absence of cracks on the surface, that made of an equal mixture of blue and black, and then dipt in black, has the preference very greatly.”

Given that the Portland Vase can be regarded as the pinnacle of Josiah’s pioneering achievements, the details concerning the production of the vase (and indeed the actual numbers of copies produced within the confines of the First Edition) will probably never be known for certain. Information revealed in his oven books (the firing records of the wares emerging from the bottle ovens of the Etruria factory) document the production of some 43 vases.

Among the first to view the copy of the Portland Vase in Jasper was Erasmus Darwin – life-long friend and physician to the Wedgwood family. Despite a strict admonition from Wedgwood himself not to show it to anyone outside his immediate family, Darwin promptly disobeyed and allowed a number of his Lichfield acquaintances to examine the piece. He somewhat lamely proffered an excuse in a letter written to Josiah dated October 1789:

“How can I possess a jewel and not communicate the pleasure to a few Derby philosophers?”

To accompany his First Edition, Wedgwood produced a booklet entitled ‘Account of the Barbarini (sic) now Portland Vase’ and he also arranged showings of copies of the vase in Jasper at various venues – including (by admission ticket only) Portland House in London. He jubilantly stated:

Invitation card to view Josiah Wedgwood’s first good copy of the Portland Vase.

“I have now the pleasure to find that my imitation of this vase, after strict comparison with the original, has given perfect satisfaction to the most distinguished artists… in Britain.”

Tri-colour Jasper portrait medallion of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 19^th century

Perhaps the most valued testimonial bestowed upon the Jasper Portland Vase was made by Sir Joshua Reynolds, founder and first President of the Royal Academy, London. He ventured:

“I can declare it to be a correct and faithful imitation, both in regard to the general effect, and the most minute detail of the parts”.

During the 19^th century, a number of ‘prestigious’ versions of the vase emerged from the Etruria factory.

A strictly limited edition of fifteen copies of the vase was issued in 1877. The result of a unique collaboration between the Etruria factory and the Stourbridge Glass Works owned by John Northwood, the manufacture of these vases – as with the First Edition – created numerous technical problems. Eventually a number of black and white Jasper vases was produced and despatched to Stourbridge for Northwood’s craftsmen to polish on lapidary wheels.

These Portland Vases epitomise the feeling and appearance of the cameo-glass original. Identifiable by their beautiful patina, copies in this edition can also be recognised by the incised initials ‘JN’ and a triangular craftsman’s mark, which appear at the base of one of the trees.

The production of a Portland Vase remains today as one of the ultimate challenges of the skills and artistry of Wedgwood potters. It takes nearly two hours of highly concentrated effort for an expert Wedgwood thrower and a turner to prepare and shape a 14-pound piece of Jasper clay into the distinctive Portland shape. The figure-making and ornamenting takes nearly two days, and firing at 1175° Centigrade, accounts for 30 hours.

Through the 20^th century, the passing of time has not dimmed the collectability of reproductions in Jasper of the Portland Vase. In the early decades, a representation in the original white on black Jasper appeared, complete with a small sized facsimile in wood and Jasper of the sarcophagus where the vase was supposedly found. This was the result of a collaboration between Harry Barnard and Bert Bentley in the early 1920s.

Over the past 30 years, limited editions have been produced in a variety of attractive colours, including white on Royal blue – a Jasper colour first evolved to celebrate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953. This particular edition was made to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of Wedgwood’s birth in 1980.

But it is, of course, those famous First Edition copies of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries that realise high prices in the auction houses. For instance, in 1981 the so-called ‘Sneyd’ copy fetched £27,000 at Sotheby’s, (London, England).

Several museums and national institutions such as the Victoria & Albert and the British Museums in London, the Fogg Art Museum in Boston and the Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama hold First Edition examples.

Other examples are to be found in the hands of individual private collectors both at home and abroad. The Wedgwood Museum Trust Limited, Barlaston, Staffordshire is fortunate in having three First Edition copies in its Collection – including Josiah Wedgwood’s own vase, number 25.

Also housed at the Wedgwood Museum are two trial vases, one illustrating the tribulations Josiah faced with ‘blistering’ of the ceramic body and ‘fracturing’ of the bas relief ornaments. There are also medallions which show Josiah’s experimentation with shading techniques, plus some original wax models on slate.

The Victorians admired the concept of the ‘self made man’. Josiah Wedgwood I (1730-95) epitomised this ideal, and is seen here in the British Workman poster, surmounted by the icon of his ceramic career, the Portland Vase

In 1989 to celebrate the 200^th anniversary of the perfecting of the Portland Vase form, a limited edition of 50 copies in black and white Jasper were hand crafted in the same painstaking manner pioneered by the founder, Josiah Wedgwood I. Shortly after the original cameo-glass Barberini Vase underwent complete restoration, and was placed back on display in the galleries of the British Museum, again in the bicentenary year of 1989.

Today, the Wedgwood Company still views this ‘crowning achievement’ as its most important icon. An outline image of the vase is now incorporated in the modern ‘Wedgwood’ backstamp.

Copyright: Lynn Miller

Information Officer

Wedgwood Museum Trust Limited

July 2002