Vase and cover, France (Paris), made by Ernest-Baptiste Leveillé glass workshop, 1889, 78-1890

Clear brown-grey glass vase and cover, mould-blown and wheel-cut, with moulded decoration; design based on the peacock tail feather.

Ernest-Baptiste Leveillé had a glass-making and selling business at 74 Boulevard Haussmann, and later in rue Coquillière, Paris. He was a member of the Paris 'art-glass' fraternity and a pupil (later partner) of Eugène Rousseau, one of the movement's founders. This piece was made after 1885 when Leveillé took over Rousseau's workshop. The glass was made, possibly, by either Appert Frères or at Clichy to Léveillé's design and decorated in Paris with a repeating pattern of peacock's tail feathers. The unusually simple vase was bought from Léveillé himself. Léveillé exhibited in the Universal Exhibition, Paris, in 1889 and it is possible that this vase was included or that Léveillé's exhibit encouraged the Museum to approach him privately.

Léveillé studied and subsequently collaborated with Eugène Rousseau and like him and many of their contemporaries his first work was inspired by the Far East, particularly Japan.

78-1890