Dutch Delft Blue-and-White Pedestal Vase

Wheel-thrown and modelled in several parts then luted together, the vase of striking architectural profile: a flaring trumpet neck above a narrow waisted collar, raised on a square-section body set over a baluster pedestal and a hexagonal spreading foot. Painted in cobalt blue with reserves of upright leaf panels to the neck, a collar of lappets and beaded motifs, the central block decorated on each face with dense peony and chrysanthemum sprays, and the lower sections with radiating gadroons and stiff leaves; fine scrolling and ruyi-type borders complete the scheme. Tin-glazed white ground with the typical in-glaze pooling of cobalt at the brush stops. Unglazed footrim; expected fritting and small losses to rim and foot consistent with age and function.
Attribution & date
The crisp tin glaze, saturated cobalt palette, and sophisticated composite construction (especially the unusual square body over a turned pedestal) point convincingly to a Delft workshop in the last decades of the seventeenth century. Closely related pedestal vases—sometimes termed kelkvazen (“goblet vases”)—are published by Van Aken-Fehmers, Delftware: History of a National Product 1650–1750, and recur in Aronson Delftware catalogues for the period 1680–1700. The form is distinct from English delft of the same date, which tends to be heavier in potting and simpler in outline.