Antique French White Opaline Perfume Flask (Flacon à Mélisse) with Gilt and Green Enamel, in Its Gilt Bronze Gothic Stand, c. 1860

Antique French White Opaline Perfume Flask (Flacon à Mélisse) with Gilt and Green Enamel, in Its Gilt Bronze Gothic Stand, c. 1860

A slender column of white opaline, decorated by hand with a band of gilt ovals and dots framed in green enamel, a frieze of tiny gilt Gothic arches beneath, and gilt rings at the neck and foot. The stopper is a tall, smooth mushroom of the same milky glass. It is the kind of flask that stood on a French dressing table in the middle of the nineteenth century holding eau de mélisse, a lemon-balm toilet water, and the dealer's handwritten invoice still calls it exactly that: a flacon à mélisse.

What makes this one special is that it still has its stand. The flask sits inside a gilt bronze sleeve cast as a miniature Gothic chapel: pointed arches, pierced tracery, little pinnacles at the top and a round, chased base ringed with trefoils. The white glass glows through the openings like light through a church window, and the Gothic arches painted on the glass echo the architecture of the mount, which is how you know the two were made for each other. The flask lifts out of the stand and can be displayed either way.

The Gothic Revival was at full strength in France in the 1840s to 1860s, and small luxury objects in the style, "à la cathédrale" as the French called it, were made for exactly this kind of pairing of opaline and gilt bronze. Finding a flask still in its original mount, after a century and a half, is a treat.

Gilt and enamel decoration bright with only light wear from handling. Stand complete and stable.

A beautifully made dressing-table piece from the heart of the French Gothic Revival, complete with its stand, and a natural companion to the gorge de pigeon flask that came home from the same dealer.