“Unrolling” an 18th-Century Porcelain Vase

To picture how this Chinese vase appeared when it arrived in France in the 18th century, you’d have to use your imagination. That’s because the vessel originally featured only a floral motif carved in dark blue-glazed porcelain, with none of the gilded bronze ornaments that are so prominent today. It was only after it landed in France that the lavish mounts were added, featuring designs such as curling vines and two young satyrs.

“Mounting exotic Chinese porcelain with gilded bronze was very popular in the second half of the 18th century in France,” explains Arlen Heginbotham, conservator of decorative arts at the Getty Museum. “The French had tremendous appreciation for the beauty of ceramics from Asia, and they also had great pride in the unparalleled skill of their own Parisian gilt bronze designers and craftsmen. By combining the two arts, they created exquisite hybrid objects that celebrate the artistic genius of Asia and Europe.”

But in 2025, the mounts were removed for the first time in at least 30 years. Here was an opportunity to do something unusual, Heginbotham realized, and document the original appearance of the vase in a special way. “The figurative design on the porcelain is quite subtle and difficult to visualize, especially since the gilt mounts partially obscure it," he explains.

He asked staff from Getty’s digital imaging department if they could document the piece without the mounts using rollout photography, a technique in which 360-degree scans are taken of a cylindrical object and then cropped and laid next to each other to create a flat, continuous image, as if the item has been “unrolled.” Picture a globe being turned into a map.

Typically, rollout photography is used to document vessels from antiquity, not 18th-century decorative arts. But senior imaging technician Steve DeFurio and digital imaging specialist Tarra Wood were up for the challenge. “We said: ‘We have the opportunity; let’s play with it. It may or may not work,’” DeFurio says.

Spoiler alert: it did work! Here’s how they created this unique type of photograph.

Removing the mounts

Heginbotham disassembled the gilt-bronze mounts as part of a technical study to authenticate them. He found that they were genuine, made by one of the top gilders in France in about 1770. Removing the mounts was akin to taking apart a three-dimensional puzzle. “You find two tiny hidden screws to start with, and you get those open, and once you have that piece off, then you can see more screws that open the next part,” Heginbotham explains. “It’s a stepwise process.”

Heginbotham removed all the gilded mounts except the “foot” on the bottom of the vase, which was still attached with its original 18th-century adhesive putty. The porcelain could now be seen much more clearly. It hails from the time of the Kangxi emperor, who ruled China from 1661 to 1722. The vessel shape is called a gu, long and slender, with a slightly flared base and trumpet-like mouth—a popular shape in China since around 1,000 BCE. The Getty Museum acquired the vase in 1987.

Now that the mounts were off, it was time for the photo shoot.

Photographing the vase

The first step in creating the rollout was to photograph the porcelain on a computerized 360-degree turntable. DeFurio placed the vessel in the center of the turntable, took a picture, turned the platform one degree, and then took another picture. He repeated this process 360 times to get photos all around the vase.

Lighting the piece was DeFurio’s biggest challenge, since its shape created shadows and reflections.

“We had to make sure the lighting kept the vase looking super clean and flat, which is the opposite of what we normally do when we photograph three-dimensional objects,” DeFurio notes.

Stitching the photographs together

With the pictures finished, it was up to Wood to build the rollout image. She analyzed DeFurio’s 360 scans and decided which ones to use for the rollout photograph, ultimately choosing 36 photos to construct the center of the vase, 13 for the top rim, and 25 for the base. She chose shots that were well lit and clearly showed a lot of detail, then cropped them into strips so they didn’t overlap.

In Photoshop, she “stitched” together the segments of the photographs, carefully aligning the patterns and lines in the vase to create one continuous image.

“Once I really zoomed in, I found all the little hairline cracks that ceramics have,” Wood says. “So I did my best to make sure that those lined up as best as possible as I assembled all the little slivers.”

Because the vase is flared at the top and bottom, Wood had to slightly warp the photos in those sections to create smooth edges (without a bit of warping, the edges would look scalloped). She played with the contrast of light and dark areas of the image to make the floral pattern in the vase pop.

The final rollout

The final image included 74 layers in Photoshop: that’s 74 photos, cropped and arranged next to each other to create an image that looks as if the vase were unrolled, flattened, and smoothed. “This was the first time I’ve done a rollout this complicated, but it was very fun to do and troubleshoot,” Wood says.

Wood also played around with the Photoshop feature called Channels, which can show how much red, green, and blue make up an image. Turning off the red and green channels revealed additional decoration carved into the porcelain that Heginbotham hadn’t seen before. “When Tarra brought the image to me, it was a revelation, like, ‘Oh my gosh, look what we’ve got.’”

Heginbotham encourages any photo editors out there to feel inspired by DeFurio and Wood’s work; it is possible to create a rollout photograph using your own camera and Photoshop.

The vase’s rollout images have been uploaded to the Getty website, so anyone can take a look and see all the details in the vase up close. Check them out and try to spot the flowers, moon, and clouds that embellish this beautiful example of Chinese porcelain!