Code: 10144
Dimensions:
Wedgwood silver capped jasperware scent bottle, blue dip with applied white jasper reliefs, of flattened circular form, threaded neck with an escalloped fan-shaped collar; portrait medallion cameos in relief on each side, obverse, bust in profile to right of Marquis de Lafayette and reverse, bust in profile to left of Jean Sylvain Bailly; each framed with a relief festoon border of rose swags and paterae.
Biographies of the individuals shown on the scent bottle.
Jean Sylvain Bailly was born in 1736 and interested himself in art, literature and astronomy. During the French revolution he was President of the National Assembly and Mayor of Paris. He retained royalist sympathies and was eventually arrested and sent to the guillotine in 1793.
Marquis de Lafayette was born in 1757; he entered the army and in 1777 he went to America to help the colonists. He was given command of a division by George Washington, with the responsibility of defending Virginia. He subsequently returned to France helping to form the National Guard. His last visit to America was in 1824, when the US Congress awarded him 200,00 dollars (today’s equivalent just over $6m). He died in Paris in 1835. Lafayette’s portrait came from a medal entitled Lafayette, Vindicator of Liberty in Two Worlds created in 1789 by engraver Pierre-Simon-Benjamin Duvivier.
Josiah Wedgwood used such images to exploit the French market.
Similar bottle in British musuem reference 1887,0307,I.745
