These cache-pots illustrate the ingenuity of French craftsmen in adapting Asian works to suit European tastes and usage in the early 18th Century.

They have been created out of the lower sections of baluster-form Chinese porcelain vases decorated with diamond-shaped reserves of different stylized dragons in rocky landscapes painted in the famille verte palette. The Parisian bronzier has mounted them with gilt bronze rims and gadrooned bases joined by pierced strapwork handles fitted with lion’s mask and ring handles and fleurs-de-lys.

The lion’s head mounts mirror the lion motifs in the porcelain. The combination of lion’s heads and fleur-de-lys is rare on works from this period: only two further pairs of Chinese porcelain cache-pots with these identical mounts are known: one sold Sotheby's New York, 25 April 1998, lot 234 for $178,000 and another sold Sotheby's New York, 20 November 1993, lot 90.