A pair of Chinese porcelain lions mounted with French gilt-bronze mounts as candelabra.Seated on their haunches, the female, 3571.1, with a cub clambering on her right leg, the male, 3571.2 with an embroidered ball beneath his left paw, their heads turned respectively to right and left and the jaws open; on the head, and back, coils of fur, the incised mane ending in a bushy tail. The flat purple-glazed base was perhaps the top taken from a plinth. Rising from the back is a gilt-bronze candlestick, a spirally fluted stem emerging from a leafy base, upholding a cylinder with three milled rings and a drip-pan with milled rim. The threaded shaft inside for a nozzle which is now lacking. The rectangular purple base is set on a moulded rectangular gilt-bronze plinth, mounted on a slab of white marble over a sycamore plinth.

Turquoise glazes, Islamic in origin, are found in Chinese pottery from the Song period (960–1279) onwards. Used later on porcelain, they were, as a rule, applied to a biscuit fired body and baked at medium temperatures. These wares were especially admired in France in the eighteenth century when the glaze was known as bleu celeste, and were favoured by Queen Marie Antoinette.

Text adapted from Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, Volume II.