A pair of covered bowls in agate and chased, gilded and openwork bronze. The bowls stand on a tripod base whose uprights are topped by putti blowing through foliage ending in ram's feet. The bases of the bowls are adorned with a rosette of leaves, flowering and grained branches connected by a central shaft, around which a snake twists, to a convex base. Porphyry counter base. The handles of the lids are pomegranate-shaped and foliate. French work from the late 18th century Height 25 cm - Diameter 12 cm (The composition of our covered bowls is freely inspired by certain models of antique tripods that came back into fashion during the reign of Louis XVI and then in the first quarter of the 19th century. As early as 1765, an engraving of an antique tripod, also known as an Athenian, was published in France by Flippart under the name "La vertueuse athénienne". It is a tripod whose legs end in ram's feet and a snake twists between the base. Our pair of covered bowls can be compared with the work of the Parisian bronze-maker Pierre Gouthière, who favoured this type of mounting "in the Etruscan taste" for some of the pieces he created, in association with Joseph Bellanger, for the Duc d'Aumont, a famous Parisian collector. The Wallace Collection in London holds a tripod vase mounted by Gouthière that passed from the collection of the Duc d'Aumont to that of Marie-Antoinette (N° F292; see F.J.B. Watson, The Wallace Collection, 1956, plate 56). Finally, we should mention that a tripod vase attributed to Gouthière is preserved in the English royal collections; it was delivered by the marchand-mercier Dominique Daguerre to George IV for Carlton House at the end of the 1780s or at the beginning of the following decade.