Lenox Ming Blossom Ivory Porcelain Pillow Vase, Relief Prunus, 24K Gold Rim, c. 1989–2005

The Piece

A Lenox ivory porcelain pillow vase in the pattern the company sold as Ming Blossom, a small, rounded square vessel with a flat rectangular mouth banded in 24 karat gold and flowering branches of prunus modeled in low relief on every face. The form is the pillow or cushion vase of the Chinese scholar's desk, translated into Lenox's warm ivory body: a soft square in plan, the sides swelling gently outward and drawing in to a short neck, the shoulders rounded, the mouth a long narrow rectangle with a thin gilt rim, and the foot a flat recessed oval. Across each face a branch of blossom climbs from the base, a gnarled trunk at the corner throwing off knotted twigs and five-petaled flowers in clusters, the relief sharp enough to catch the light and shallow enough to lie under the glaze without a hard edge. The ivory body has the creamy, translucent warmth that made Lenox the American porcelain of the White House table, and the gold at the rim is laid thick and bright.

The vase is in excellent condition: no chips, cracks, crazing or repairs, the glaze bright, the relief crisp and the gold rim unworn. The base carries the Lenox wreath mark in brown with the copyright symbol and Made in U.S.A., and the remains of the original foil sticker beside it. It holds water and will take a short stem, a sprig of blossom or a few herbs.

History & Provenance

Lenox was founded in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1889 by Walter Scott Lenox, who set out to make an American porcelain that could stand beside the European factories and succeeded so well that his ivory-bodied china was chosen for the White House by Woodrow Wilson in 1918, the first American service to be used there. The warm ivory tone, a Belleek-type body refined into something softer and sturdier, became the signature of the firm, and from the 1920s it carried a line of giftware alongside the dinnerware: vases, bowls, dishes and figures in the same ivory, trimmed in 24 karat gold and modeled in low relief. Ming Blossom, with its flowering prunus branches borrowed from the Chinese porcelain tradition that the name invokes, was one of the giftware patterns of the late twentieth century, offered in a small family of shapes that included this pillow vase, and sold through the jewelers and department stores that were the Lenox bridal registry's home ground. The pattern has since been retired.

The vase is marked and attributed on the mark. The dating rests on the mark and the construction rather than style alone: the brown Lenox wreath with the copyright symbol and the words Made in U.S.A. is the backstamp the company used on its domestic giftware from the late 1980s until production moved offshore in the early 2000s, and the piece is dated c. 1989–2005.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This is the small vase that lives on a nightstand, a bathroom counter, a desk or a windowsill with a single stem in it and looks finished with nothing in it at all. The ivory and gold sit with white linen and marble, with blue and white, with silver and with the dark wood of a traditional room, and the blossom relief gives it a quiet texture that a plain bud vase lacks. It makes a natural gift for a Lenox collector, a bride or anyone who keeps a few flowers by the bed. For a shop or designer client it is the marked, excellent, American porcelain accent that styles a tablescape and sells on the name.