Covered Tureen on Stand (Pot à oille) (1797–98): Art, History and Details

Covered Tureen on Stand (Pot à oille) (1797–98) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Henry Auguste (French, 1759–1816).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This pot-à-oille was designed by master goldsmith Henri Auguste after drawings by draftsman and sculptor Jean Guillaume Moitte. Though many of the neoclassical decorative elements on this piece are pulled from Moitte’s design, Auguste’s final product leaves out much of the proposed ornamentation. Instead this object finds distinction in its large size and smooth expanses of silver that emphasize the purity of its lines.

Object facts

• Title: Covered Tureen on Stand (Pot à oille)
• Date: 1797–98
• Creator attribution: Henry Auguste (French, 1759–1816)
• Culture: France, late 18th-early 19th Century
• Type: Silver
• Technique: silver
• Dimensions: Overall: 26.2 x 29.1 cm (10 5/16 x 11 7/16 in.); Average: 22.6 cm (8 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1952.592

A detail from the museum

The coat of arms on the body of the work corresponds to the family of Federico Carlos Gravina, a Sicilian-Spanish admiral who was known to have had a close diplomatic relationship with Napoleon I.

Collection credit

Gift of James Hazen Hyde

Further reading listed by the museum

• Foote, Helen. "A Gift of French Silver." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 40, no. 4 (1953): 64-67.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.