In the second half of the eighteenth century French designers sought ever rarer and more exotic materials for decorative objects. This pair of vases, of a granite called orbicular diorite that is found in both Corsica and the Ural mountains, may have been turned and polished either in Paris or St. Petersburg, where there was a luxury market for hard stone objects. They were then completed in Paris with the addition of gilt-bronze mounts, including large handles in the form of rams' heads and finials with a knob of berries above acanthus leaves. Objects of this quality were much sought after by collectors and were sometimes specially commissioned by the Parisian dealers called marchands merciers, the merchants who sold furniture and works of art and served as entrepreneurs of taste and fashion.