Specialist Becky MacGuire looks at a selection of ‘soldier’ vases from The Tibor collection, which was sold at Christie’s in New York in 2019.
One might think that the root of the term ‘soldier vase’ is fairly obvious, as these masterworks of Chinese Export porcelain do, in many ways, resemble stick-straight sentries.
They stand nearly five feet tall — even taller when raised on their carved giltwood stands — and they are often installed in guard-like fashion, flanking doorways and mantelpieces in stately homes.
Then there are the silhouettes themselves. Gently curved and exactingly proportional, they swell at what might be one’s shoulders and taper at what could be read as one’s ankles and, higher up, one’s neck. They are vibrantly and intricately enamelled and some are topped with figurines of Buddhist lions, which serve as handles, though one might see them as the pointed or feathered military helmets of yore.
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