Table centrepiece - Incense burner (alambic)

The perfumer was an inventive, chinoiseriestyle speciality of 18th century Rococo interiors. Madame de Pompadour’s (1721–1764) favourite art dealer, Lazare Duvaux (†1758), mentioned some similar perfumers in his records in the 1750s, all used in an aristocratic or royal milieu. One, a cassolette, came into the possession of Madame de Pompadour in late January 1751. There are two kinds of perfumers from this era, the cassolette, which evaporated the perfume from an open dish using a heating dish (rechaud), and the alambic, which also had a heater, but used a closed vessel and led the evaporating scents through tubes. This piece is of the latter type. A laughing Chinese figure sits under a flowering rose pergola, holding a frog in his hand, beside him a pear- or gourd-shaped vessel. According to Chinese mythology, the first is the symbol of long life, and the latter the holder of an elixir of eternal life. The figure must be Liu Hai, the god of wealth and wellbeing. Rising out of the finelycrafted perfume vessel are budding rose stems, and through these and the tiny network of rose-branch tubes, the scented mist passed to the white roses, through which it evaporated. Another tube leads upwards from under the side of the vessel, and there is a tap on the back of the figure the scented fumes were probably also released through the mouth of the figure. The figure of Liu Hai and the perfume vessel itself is mounted on a graceful architectural gilded bronze base with a little balustrade, stairs and rocaille. The special art work is truly a rarity, the few known pieces being held in great private collections of the world. A piece of similar quality is a cassolette representing Pu-tai, in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.