The pair of vases L97 and L103 are late 18th to early 19th century in style. They are modelled on an ancient bronze form and were probably made at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province. In the past it was suggested that the Chinese poems painted on front and back might be by Su Dongpo but colleagues at the British Museum do not think that they are.

We are grateful to Jessica Harrison-Hall, head of the China Section at the British Museum, and volunteer Chun I Lin, for their help with this entry and the transliteration of the characters, 2019.

In his 1835 Description Soane refers to these vases as two beautiful China Jars given to me by the late Viscount Bridport. They were in the collection by 10 August 1825 when they appear in a watercolour of the Monk's Parlour SM Vol. 82_68. Soane carried out work for Rear-Admiral Alexander Hood, later (from 1800) 1st Viscount Bridport (1726–1814), and his first wife, Mary West (who died a few months after Soane's first involvement) and second wife, Maria Sophia (whom he married in 1788), at Cricket Lodge, Cricket St Thomas, Somerset, in 1786-90, 1801, 1803 and 1809-10. The Admiral was a distinguished naval commander during the Napoleonic Wars and in his absence at sea it was often his second wife who was in practice Soane's client. The Soanes and the Bridports became good friends, Eliza Soane sometimes accompanying her husband on his visits to Cricket St Thomas. Soane's last work for the Bridports was the design of the Admiral's memorial tablet in the Church at Cricket. Lady Bridport outlived her husband, dying in 1831. Neither the Admiral nor his wife ever visited Asia and presumably they acquired the vases in England.

L97, pair
L103.A, stand