St. James's (Charles Gouyn) Scent Bottle

Code: MB635

Circa 1755

Soft-paste porcelain

Height: 3 1/8 in. (8.1 cm.)

While a distinct group of porcelain figures, scent bottles and wares labeled “Girl-in-a-Swing” had been identified as made by the same London manufacturer in the 1920s, the association with Charles Gouyn and his factory in St. James’s was not definitive until 1993. As a result, many scent bottles originally catalogued as Chelsea are now thought to be St. James’s. One such example is a St. James’s scent bottle of the present model with slight variations in coloring and flower painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, formerly in the collection of Irwin Untermyer. This scent bottle was illustrated in Yvonne Hackenbroch’s catalogue of Untermyer’s collection published in 1957, where it was attributed to Chelsea.