Bronze Age Gold from Wales

Oviform vase, rising to an upstanding neck with an everted rim, gilt brass collar above a shallow spreading foot, scroll handles springing from bearded river god masks, standing on a square shallow plinth of gilt brass, lined with wood (cover and liner missing); painted in enamels directly onto the white ground with a bird on each side, and elaborately decorated with gilding shaded with brown, the neck bearing a band of feathers between burnished gilt borders, the birds perched on foliage sprays, inscribed cartouches below, above a band of plants, the foot burnished.

This ice-cream pail is from the 'service des oiseaux de l'Amérique Meridionale', painted by Pauline Knip and Charles-Sébastien Sorel.