Paris 101/18 Vase

For the 2024 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, scheduled to take place from 26 July to 11 August 2024 in France, all eyes will be on Paris the main host city. The design follows Paul’s iconic 2012 London vase, launched prior to our own Olympic Games, which held sweeping views of England’s capital city under the Victorian gas lamps of The Thames.
On the same shape Paul now unfolds a vision of Paris from along the River Seine with the city’s colossal landmark, the Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889 and named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, now transformed into a tubelined masterpiece with each wrought-iron lattice segment on the Champ de Mars outlined in liquid clay.

Locally nicknamed "La dame de fer" (French for "Iron Lady"), the Eiffel Tower was constructed as the centrepiece of the 1889 World's Fair and to crown the centennial anniversary of the French Revolution. Although initially criticised by some of France's leading artists and intellectuals for its design, it now sings triumphantly on this Moorcroft prestige vase as it soars over the epic skyline of what is said to be the most romantic city in the world.

In great vistas, Paul captures the busy traffic highway of The Seine, France’s main seaport in the 16th century, as tourists and locals are witnessed soaking up the atmosphere as they journey around the vase to the landmark most loved by Parisians – The Cathedral of Notre-Dame. So important is this French treasure that a flurry of building work has completed the re-building of the Gothic spire after it went up in flames, and dramatically collapsed, during the massive fire of 2019 which consumed the 850-year-old state-owned cathedral.

In truth, the reconstruction has tested the fabric of local artisanship and so it is most fitting that Moorcroft, an Arts and Crafts pottery, uses her own heritage techniques to allow for exacting recreation of the 1859 version by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. For many of the artisans, from carpenters and stonemasons to sculptors and gilders — rebuilding Notre-Dame is the job of a lifetime. The same is true of Paris for Paul Hilditch and all the craftspeople at Moorcroft.

Ex Tax: £4,770.83

• Designer: Paul Hilditch
• Dimensions: H 45.00 x W 21.00 x D 21.00 cm
• Availability: Delivery may be up to 14 weeks