Ewer and basin

Starting in the eighteenth century, the ewer and basin were commonplace elements of one’s ablutions. This set shows the spare forms characteristic of the Empire style, whose severity is softened by rich, myth-inspired ornamentation. The ewer’s ovoid belly is girded by a frieze of palmettes and seahorses framing medallions featuring Neptune, god of the sea, and his wife, Amphitrite, and ends with a Rhodian sun head. These motifs recur on the basin’s marlis, or the edge, underscored by a heartshaped frieze. The handle, depicting a siren and attached to the spout with butterfly wings, remains the ewer’s most impressive element. The butterfly motif, associated in the Neoclassical vocabulary with Psyche, at once evokes the fragility of love, the birth of new life and the lightness of the transports of the soul.