Franz Anton Mehlem ran his Bonn factory through the same wave of Japanese-influenced Aesthetic Movement taste that reshaped so much British decorative porcelain in the late 1800's, and this pair shows the German side of that same conversation. Each two-handled bottle vase carries a blush ivory neck and base around a cream baluster body worked in shot colour, gilt clouds drifting across the surface and gold-dusted handles finishing the shape. One side of each vase carries a hand-painted polychrome parrot perched among tree branches and foliage; the reverse carries butterflies, and the surrounding panels are worked with high-relief gilding rather than flat gold, giving the decoration real texture under the glaze.
The design's debt to Royal Worcester's own Aesthetic Movement output is fairly clear, this kind of cross-pollination was common between European factories chasing the same fashionable Japanese-influenced market during the 1880's, with ideas moving freely between British and Continental workshops rather than staying confined within national lines. Both vases carry the impressed circular Franz Anton Mehlem Royal Bonn mark to the base, along with the painted red pattern number 1882 and shape number 22, giving the pair a level of documentation that puts firm numbers behind what would otherwise be a fairly broad stylistic attribution.
Condition notes
Good antique condition. Some crazing and scuffing to gilt appropriate to age; one vase has a chip to foot and firing defect where one handle attaches to the body.
