Wilhelm Schiller & Son ran their Bohemian pottery through the last decades of the 1800's, producing majolica work that leaned into historicist revival styles rather than the newer decorative movements gaining ground elsewhere in Europe at the time. This twin-handled vase carries raised Mannerist-style foliate motifs across a cream and ivory ground, finished with teal-green banding at the rim, neck, and base and amber-toned scrollwork running through the handles and body, with daemon faces worked into the base itself.
Mannerism itself was a sixteenth-century Italian movement, prized for stretching classical proportion and ornament into something more exaggerated and theatrical than the balanced Renaissance style it followed. German and Bohemian factories revived that vocabulary through the 1800's, and this vase's scrolling acanthus and daemon faces sit squarely within that tradition, reaching back three centuries for a decorative language rather than inventing a new one. The piece carries the maker's mark WS&S alongside mould number 2113, dating it to around 1880, a period when historicist revival styles like this one were still very much in demand across Continental Europe.
Condition notes
Excellent antique condition. Small chips to base and neck rim.
