This vase was among eighty-nine pieces of Sèvres porcelain bequeathed with a collection especially rich in eighteenth-century French decorative art by John Jones in 1882. As the handbook to the Jones Collection stated in 1883: "Suddenly ... a collection has been given ... which contains the very objects so much to be desired, and, as it seemed a year ago, so hopeless of attainment." A military tailor who made his fortune during the Crimean War, Jones (1799-1882) started collecting seriously in the 1850s, sharing a taste for luxury objects of the ancien regime with aristocratic collectors such as the fourth marquess of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace (founders of London's Wallace Collection), John Bowes (of the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle) and Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild (of Waddesdon Manor).

The most important French porcelain factory was founded in 1740 in the royal chateau of Vincennes. In 1756 it was transferred to Sèvres, the other side of Paris, and shortly after was bought by Louis XV. The support and protection of the king and his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, enabled it to secure the best artists, sculptors, designers and chemists. Sèvres porcelain soon became the most sought after in Europe. This neo-classical style vase was designed by Pierre-Elisabeth de Fontanieu who included it in a book of vases published in 1770 entitled: Collection de Vases Inventés et Dessinés par Mr de Fontanieu... It consists of twenty shapes of vases represented by forty designs (twenty in outline only) and seven vases on plinths. On the evidence of the surviving models, the factory copied three of his drawings all of which are called vases fontanieux in the records. A pair of vases dated 1773 of almost the same shape, also with a turquoise ground, is in the Royal Collection.

Geoffrey de Bellaigue. French Porcelain in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Royal Collection Publications, 2009, 3 vols, see Volume 1, no. 86