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Vase

Designer Designed by Philippe Wolfers Belgian
ca. 1896
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 556
In 1892 Philippe Wolfers, with his brothers Max and Robert, took over his father's prosperous goldsmith firm and became its design director. The shape of this vase, which is one of a kind, reflects his earlier training as a sculptor and draftsman. The object employs the quintessential sculptural form, the figura serpentinata, which lures the observer into handling, turning, and admiring it from all sides. Naturalistic cyclamen floral elements had intrigued Wolfers since 1895. Here the leaves embrace the restrained double-gourd shape and create a playful contrast to the wildly curling shoots sprouting at the waist. These shoots encase the body and culminate in a lobed handle. This vase is a highly individual interpretation of seventeenth and eighteenth-century ceramic ornament forms: Wolfers freed the typically painted décor and transformed it through the metal's malleability into three-dimensional ornament. The preparatory drawing was shown at the Paris Salon of 1897, and one year later the vase was published as an icon of Art Nouveau in Studio-Talk. The vase is a highly important document of the style in Brussels, a city that celebrates Art Nouveau in the legacy of versa tile artists such as Henry van der Velde, Paul Hankar, and Victor Horta. Between 1909 and 1910 Horta designed the new Wolfers Frères offices in that city.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Vase
  • Designer: Designed by Philippe Wolfers (Belgian, 1858–1929)
  • Maker: Wolfers Freres
  • Date: ca. 1896
  • Culture: Belgian, Brussels
  • Medium: Silver, partly gilded
  • Dimensions: Height: 8 1/2 in. (21.6 cm);
    Diameter (foot ring): 3 1/2 in. (8.9 cm)
  • Classification: Metalwork-Silver
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Friends of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Gifts, 2003
  • Object Number: 2003.236
  • Curatorial Department: European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

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Orchidées, Philippe Wolfers Belgian, Glazed stoneware, French, Ivry
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Emile Muller and Co.
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Panel with grotesques, from a set of bed hangings, Cornelis Floris II Netherlandish, Silk, wool, silver and silver-gilt thread (20-22 warps per inch, 8-9 per cm.), Netherlandish, Brussels
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Cornelis Floris II
ca. 1550–60
Elector Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria on Horseback, Roger Schabol Flemish, Bronze, with gilt-bronze base of about two decades later, Flemish, Brussels
Elector Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria on Horseback
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Martin Desjardins
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Reliquary bust of a companion of Saint Ursula, Oak, polychromed and gilt on plaster ground; glass opening for relic, Belgian, possibly Brussels
Reliquary bust of a companion of Saint Ursula
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Aglauros’s Vision of the Bridal Chamber of Herse, from the Story of Mercury and Herse, Giovanni Battista Lodi da Cremona Italian, Wool, silk and precious metal-wrapped threads (20-22 warps per inch, 8-9 warps per cm.), Netherlandish, Brussels
Aglauros’s Vision of the Bridal Chamber of Herse, from the Story of Mercury and Herse
Multiple artists/makers
designed ca. 1540, woven ca. 1570

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