Extremely rare Royal Worcester vase

This is an important and sublimely made little vase created by George Owen at Royal Worcester in the year 1917. The Royal Worcester porcelain factory was one of the most highly regarded in Britain in the 19th Century. Founded in the mid 18th Century it produced some the finest porcelain masterpieces throughout its long existence, and attracted many top quality artisans.

George Owen was a modeller with a truly unique skill of reticulating (piercing) extremely fine decorative pieces. While there were other modellers with this skill, no one was able to work to Owen’s standard and his pieces stand out in perfection, detail and beauty. Owen worked behind locked doors and never allowed anyone to see how he created his “ivory reticulated” pieces as they were called – he would even put away his tools when disturbed, lest anyone would discover his method. One thing that made Owen unrivalled at his skill was the fact that he was ambidextrous, i.e. he could work right-handed as well as left-handed with the same precision, allowing him to change hands depending on which side of a vase he was working on and applying equal pressure either way. Owen had his vases cast especially thinly by his son, however even his son was not allowed to watch him work and the piercing took place behind a locked door. It could take many months to create each item, which made them extremely valuable even then.

This small vase is ivory-white with very fine raised gilt decorations. The vase is in the Persian style with two handles on top of its body. It has incredibly fine honeycomb reticulation. The vase is marked with the Royal Worcester mark with a date mark for 1919 and the hand-engraved signature “G. Owen”. The date of 1919 is two years after Owen died; as Owen left behind a considerable amount of stock it is likely that it took the factory a few years to get all items glazed, gilded and ready for sale, at which point the mark would have been applied.

Dimensions 8cm (3.2″) wide incl. handles, 15.5cm (6.2″) high

Price, excluding VAT and postage and packaging: £23,400.00 GBP

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