Mastery of Design: The Froment-Meurice Bottle, 1854



Bottle
French, 1854
The Victoria & Albert Museum



This exceptional bottle of rock crystal is mounted in silver and silver-gilt, enameled and set with rubies and Baroque pearls. Its rectangular body is cut with oblique grooves, spreading neck, and a circular foot. The silver and gilt mounting is made up of sprays of enameled foliage set with pearls of various shapes and colors, tied by a ribbon enameled in black and set in rubies.


This is the work of François-Désiré Froment-Meurice in Paris, 1854. Here, François-Désiré Froment-Meurice is imitating the mounted rock crystals produced by Renaissance goldsmiths for court collections and earlier Egyptian vessels. The foliate decoration and the form of the bottle are, however, distinctively in the fashion of the 1850s.