Nature, Porcelain and Enlightenment

Nature, Porcelain and Enlightenment

Nature, Porcelain and Enlightenment

15 Duke Street St James’s London SW1Y 6DB Tel: +44 (0)20 7 389 6550 Fax: +44 (0)207 389 6556 Email: gallery@haughton.com www.haughton.com All exhibits are for sale

Foreword Our current catalogue ‘Nature Porcelain and Enlightenment’, takes its inspiration from porcelain manufactured during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe within the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is a gathering together of pieces most of which are functional, in some way. They therefore become part of the daily use of the aristocratic and royal households at that time. These pieces are also inspired by a natural yearning to question and learn from the scientific breakthroughs and new understandings, which categorise this period of learning and discovery. Exploration and science, both essentially funded by the ruling classes now began to go hand in hand with new styles that were to capture the imagination of artists, sculptors, modellers and their patrons of the period. This led to a transformation of the theatrical baroque into a new and natural rococo style that endorsed man’s triumph over nature.

Europe in the mid eighteenth century was riveted by an insatiable appetite for knowledge, exploration and discovery. This forged a new scientific approach, which was to spearhead the Age of the Enlightenment. Through new eminent publications science and nature became the pinnacle of taste and fashion amongst the aristocracy, who decorated their homes with this organic natural force of life. The birth of English porcelain in London in the mid 1740’s, developed by Nicholas Sprimont and Charles Gouyn at the Chelsea manufactory provided an unparalleled opportunity for enlightenment and the arts to fuse together. The examples of the very rare surviving Chelsea Duck, together with its leaf moulded stand (Page 29) and the ingeniously modelled Billing Doves tureen and cover (Page 33) beautifully illustrate that the new ‘natural rococo’ style developed at Chelsea was an invention that patiently recreated animals and plants that were modelled or drawn from the life. These natural recreations filled the eighteenth century home with a totally reinvented Cabinet of Nature’s Curiosity. Both these ornithological forms were manufactured in 1754 in Chelsea. In this year Nicholas Sprimont introduced a natural energy that was to grow throughout the repertoire of design and form and it is this year of manufacture that is remarkably recorded in the contemporary sale catalogue of the following year in the spring of 1755 when the porcelain made in the previous year was sold.

The village of Chelsea was sited outside of the city of London and placed on the banks of the river Thames thus the soil was extremely fertile being rich alluvial deposits. In the mid eighteenth century this area was a network of nurseries for trees, which were depositories for seedlings brought back from foreign scientific exploration abroad. There were also market gardens for the production of every kind of vegetable and fruit needed for the hungry environs of London. Sir Hans Sloane, the great long lived naturalist lived at Cheyne Manor and leased the area of the Physic garden to the Royal Society of Apothecaries in perpetuity. It was here that Phillip Miller came, on the recommendation of Sloane, to become Head Gardener or Curator. Miller’s sister-inlaw Sarah Kennett was married in 1738 to a highly skilled botanical artist George Dionysius Ehret. Ehret was chosen to illustrate a number of plates in Phillip Miller’s book, ‘Figures of the most beautiful, useful and uncommon plants described in the gardener’s dictionary’, published in London in 1752. These illustrations taken from the first of Miller’s two volumes,

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together with those taken from Plantae Selectae, published at intervals by Dr. Trew of Nuremburg from 1750 both provided a design source for the Chelsea painters to copy. This taste for the decoration of natural specimens spawned a range of naturalistic tableware that was to be fittingly named in 1758 after Sir Hans Sloane himself. Plants such as Cactus, Pineapple, Banana and Cocoa tree, previously all unknown, were presented in full bloom as well as with their fruits for the very first time on the new Chelsea porcelain bearing the red anchor mark.

The actual plates (Pages 48 and 49) that formed part of a parcel of Chelsea porcelain sent to Dublin from London to be sold by Auction and are mentioned in a surviving advertisement in Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, 1-4 July, 1758, for an auction at Mr. Young’s rooms on Cork Hill of Chelsea Porcelain ‘Three fine tureens….one in curious plants, with table plates, soup plates and desart plates enamelled from Sir Hans Sloane’s plants’. These plates then descended within the same family until being sold, as part of the effects of the Lady Headford, by Stokes and Quirke, Kildare St. Dublin 19th September 1944. The plate painted with a Becconia plant, page 48, is copied from Tab. IV of Plantae Selectae, from the engraving by J. J. Haid after an original painting by G. D. Ehret.

The work of the ‘Father of ornithology’, George Edwards, is commemorated in the Bow models of the Cock and Cold Finch (Page 26) taken from his great publication The Natural History of Uncommon Birds, pl. No. 30, Volume 1, printed at the Royal College of Physicians in 1743, where Edwards had been appointed Librarian on the recommendation of Sir Hans Sloane. Edwards visited Hans Sloane on a weekly basis and it is easy to see that the relationship was one of pupil and mentor. Sir Hans Sloane had, during and after his travels, collected an astonishing array of natural specimens, the dried and preserved examples we now see in the Enlightenment Galleries of the British Museum and the Natural History Museum. He also had collected a good many live specimens of birds and animals, which were kept in a Menagerie at Cheyne Manor. It was here that Edwards recorded and sketched many of the examples that we see in the four Volumes that make up the Natural History of Uncommon Birds, which in part he dedicated to Sir Hans Sloane and in part to God. Edwards notes that these particular birds were lent to him by Taylor White Esq, ‘who procur’d them from the Peak in Derbyshire’. These porcelain examples modelled to an astonishingly high degree of natural accuracy and left in the white, show that the Bow manufactory, like that of Chelsea had access to his volumes. They provided a natural source of examples, recently recorded and modelled from the life that perfectly captured the imagination of the new scientifically minded aristocracy and its quest for enlightened knowledge.

‘Nature, Porcelain and Enlightenment’, is essentially a collection of natural subjects inspired by scientific knowledge, however there is also a theme of the symbolism and Triumph of love that weaves through some of the pieces. The First Period Worcester Valentine Pattern Sugar Box and Cover (Page 10) is from a group of pieces collected by Anthony Tuke and then his son Sir Anthony Tuke, both were successive Chairmen of Barclays Bank and pioneering collectors in this field. The Tukes and their contemporaries were the founding members of the English Porcelain Circle that became the English Ceramic Circle and a particular close confidant was H.R.Marshall, whose collection is now at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Their chosen contacts within the London trade were

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Frank and Kathleen Tilley of 2 Symons Street, Sloane Square. The letters ‘to and fro’ from Sloane Square to Lombard Street are both a rare survival of early English porcelain collecting correspondence between collector and dealer and provide for a fascinating insight into the forming and growth of a collection beginning in the late 1930’s.

The elements of the Valentine pattern celebrate the Triumph of love, the ‘billing doves of Venus’ stand on Cupid’s bow and arrows, at the side of the altar to Hyman, on which burn a pair of flaming hearts.

This pattern was originally devised by Lieutenant Piercey Brett for decoration on a Chinese export service commemorating the marriage of Commodore Anson, the Chinese original service is at Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire the seat of the Earls of Lichfield.

The pair of silver shaped early Worcester sauceboats, (No.) also from the Tuke Collection are transfer printed with both amatory and bucolic designs, the first showing a love scene after Jean-Antoine Watteau and the second a milking scene after Gainsborough. The new successful silver forms that had begun to be developed at Lund’s Bristol were carried over by Dr. Wall and his partners at Worcester after the successful acquisition of the concern in 1751. This high status silver style, was aimed at the aristocracy but was also avidly bought by the growing upper middle classes. Transfer printing was developed at Worcester in circa 1753/54 and when employed on silver shapes like these sauceboats, became an inventive substitute for engraved silver.

Venus in her chariot (Page 16) is modelled by J.J.Kaendler, and manufactured at Meissen circa 1745. The goddess of Love, as legend states, was born of the shell and sits in her baroque marine chariot, formed as an upturned conch shell. Her place in divine mythology as pagan goddess of love is epitomised by her flowing hair, plunging décolletage and attributes of pearls and roses and other floral symbols of love. She holds an apple in her right hand, reminding us of the fabled beauty contest at which she was judged the winner by Paris and as her prize was awarded the Golden Apple.

The ‘billing doves’, appear at her feet and her acolyte, the winged Cupid, takes his place beside her endorsing her unassailable place in myth and legend as Queen of the Triumph of Love.

Johann Joachim Kaendler was born on 15th June 1706 and through his gifted and enlightened father, who studied Theology at Leipzig, Kaendler soon began to follow his fascination with nature, science and religion. Kaendler apprenticed under Benjamin Thomae and began working in the Green Vaults and his keen skill soon drew the watchful attention of Augustus II King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. The King appointed him Court Sculptor in 1730 and then on the 21st June 1731 invited him to become a modeller at the Meissen Manufactory, to assist Johann Gottlieb Kirchner in modelling different species of animals for the Japanese Palace.

Kaendler excelled and his skill is quite unique in capturing the life and spirit of his subjects. In June 1734 he travelled

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to the royal Menagerie at Moritzburg and on a series of visits makes drawings and sketches of animals from life. It is with this sense of natural vigour that the Meissen models of Squirrels (Page 19) spring to life in their captured moment of surprise, as they look up and cease momentarily their foraging for hazel nuts. Squirrels were also the admired and special pets of the male aristocracy across Europe. ‘Boys frequently nurse this beautiful and active animal’, states an eighteenth century encyclopedia. Under the Lockean tradition of thinking these wild animals could be brought into training and civilisation and then in turn could influence their trainer. The depiction of Squirrels wearing collars such as on these Meissen examples was also understood to be a symbol of safety and protection of childhood. Such depictions appear within European portraiture as early as 1526 with Holbein’s portrait of Anne Lady Lovell, the wife of Sir Francis Lovell. Squirrels appear in a more natural way in the portraits by the American colonial artist John Singleton Copley from the 1750’s and 60’s. It is within the portrait of Henry Pelham dated to 1765 that Copley creates a sense of peace that radiates with the enlightened belief of nurturing and protecting the young. There is surprise on the faces of these Meissen animals but there is also contentment in the familiarity that they experience as we watch them and we as the viewer are generously invited to look into their eyes and there, by extension, into their soul.

There could be nothing more appropriate following on from the symbolism of the Meissen Squirrels than to introduce the Paris Dihl and Guerhard biscuit porcelain Seated Infant Boy reading, after a model by Charles Gabriel Sauvage (Page 22). Sauvage had been chief modeller at the Niderviller porcelain manufactory before his move in the early 1790’s to work for Monsieur Dihl. The model appears in a portrait of Dihl that survives painted by Etienne Le Guay onto a porcelain plaque. The seated child shows a young male in search of written knowledge. The sculpture conveys a sense of learning and a quest for meaning, a mind developing with careful thought and received knowledge and one that will add in due course his own story to the experience of life. Paris at this time was politically unsteady but the calmness and peace that this child radiates transcends our knowledge of that time of earthly struggle to convey a sense of the ethereal that resonates and becomes an embodiment of the Age of the Enlightenment.

Finally our catalogue ends with a group of pieces made by Gunilla Maria Akesson, in our own contemporary time, especially to augment this collection. The cylinder vases (Page 55) are modelled individually by her in her own interpretation of stability and vulnerability, they evoke both in her own unique way and a description and statement in her own words can be read on page 54.

There are many more superb examples included within this selling collection and we look forward to welcoming you to our Gallery for you to fully experience the natural life force of ‘Nature, Porcelain and Enlightenment’.

Brian Haughton and Paul Crane.

St. James’s London.

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An extremely rare Doccia Figural Group of Rustics Playing Cards, comprised of four figures, three men wearing comfortably fitting eighteenth century rural dress, two wearing hats and playing cards while the third man looks on. A female figure, wearing smock dress frilled at the chest, her hair tied in a bun, looks over the seated figure’s shoulder and motions to the right, on an irregularly moulded slabbed base with incised vegetation.

Circa 1770 Height: 7 ins. (18 cms.)

Length: 8 ins. (20 cms.)

The genre scene of the rustics playing cards seems not to be recorded in the literature and therefore is of the greatest rarity. The sculpting of this group is so expertly achieved as to be one of the most specialised hands working at the manufactory.

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A very rare Doccia Figure of a Chatir, the attendant of the Grand Vizier, modelled in walking pose his body with contrapposto stance, his right hand with a mace and the left hand on his hip, dressed in a long flowing gown, worn over a frogged chemise and pleated skirt with sash and brocaded border, and wearing on his head a turban with bejewelled aigrette and ankle length boots, about to step forward from the square sectioned base.

Circa 1750 Height: 8½ ins. (21.5 cms.)

An extremely rare model of the Grand Vizier’s attendant, from the very earliest period of figural modelling at Doccia.

Copied from an engraving by J.B. van Mour taken from Charles de Ferriol Marquis Le Hay, ‘Recueil de cent estampes representant differentes nations du Levant tirees sur les tableaux peints d’apres nature en 1707 et 1708.’

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A very rare pair of Early First Period Dr Wall Sauceboats, of raised pedestal moulded form, the applied handle with rising scrolled thumbpiece, the front on each printed and painted in bright colours with a squirrel eating a nut within a floral cartouche, the reverse with a pheasant, the interior of the first printed and painted with a rural scene after Watteau, the interior of the second with a milking scene after Gainsborough, each within a famille verte floral border with a butterfly in flight at the lip.

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Circa 1754 Length: 7½ ins. (19 cms.)

Provenance: The Anthony Tuke and Sir Anthony Tuke Collections.

Exhibited: The International Ceramics Fair and Seminar 1999 Loan Exhibition. No. 27.

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A rare Early First Period Dr. Wall Worcester Sugar Box and Cover, beautifully decorated in the famille rose palette with the Valentine Pattern, painted with the characteristic puce mountainous landscape, the garlanded breadfruit tree on Tenian Island, the pair of flaming hearts on the altar to the god hyman and reverse painted with a pair of billing doves seated on a quiver of arrows and a green love bird in flight overhead, the ogival cover with delicately pencilled puce monochrome lambrequin border and applied with an open crocus finial.

Circa 1757 Height: 4½ ins. (11.5 cms.)

Provenance: The Anthony Tuke and Sir Anthony Tuke Collections.

Exhibited: The International Ceramics Fair and Seminar, 1999 Loan Exhibition No. 14.

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A rare Early First Period Dr. Wall Worcester Octagonal Tea bowl and Saucer, printed with birds within a garden and landscape, the saucer with a pair of billing doves beside a tree and the tea bowl with two kingfishers, within a pencilled black diaper and floral panelled border.

Circa 1756 Diameter: 4Âź ins. (11 cms.)

Painter’s numeral to the underside of the tea bowl Provenance: The Anthony Tuke and Sir Anthony Tuke Collections.

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A highly important and very rare early Vincennes sleeping child, glazed and in the white, the child delicately modelled reclining upon an irregularly moulded rockwork base, draped in loose fitting cloth.

Circa 1749 Length: 8 ins. (20 cms.)

There are three other recorded examples of this model: The first in the Victoria and Albert Museum London, C.158-1929. The second in a private English collection and a third The Huntington Art Collections, inv 2010.6.17. An interesting variant of this model, no.

164 Vincennes and Early Sevres Porcelain,The Belvedere Collection, pl. 164.

Provenance: Private English Collection

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A rare Sevres biscuit model of La Baigneuse modelled after Falconet, the bathing venus-like female figure scantily clad and stepping out of rushes into the water, modelled wearing a jewelled band around her arm, raised on a circular base.

Circa 1758 Height: 15 ins. (35cms.)

Incised script AB to the base.

Provenance: Private English Collection.

First modelled by Falconet as a reduction of the marble sculpture now in the Louvre, exhibited at the Salon of 1757. See S Erikson and Geoffrey de Bellaigue, Sevres Porcelain, fig. 127 for the example in the Copenhagen Museum of Decorative Arts.

See also Emile Bourgeois, Le Biscuit de Sevres au XVIIIe siecle, fig. 91.

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A rare and fine Sevres Ecuelle, Cover and Oval Stand, Ecuelle ‘Ronde Tournee’ et Plateau ‘Ovale’ 2eme Grandeur, the circular form with twin double interlaced handles, decorated by Philippe Xhrouet, pere, in a ‘fries riche’ style, with brightly painted roundels of flowers flanked with interlocking fruiting laurel C scrolls alternating with similar gilded C’s, between blue and gold borders of wave and foliate ornament on a ground of gold vermicule and blue cell dots.

Blue interlaced L’s enclosing date letter P, painter’s mark of a cross for Xhrouet, incised marks.

Provenance: The Earl of Harewood, Harewood House, Yorkshire.

Philippe Xhrouet, pere, was active from 1750-1775.

His subjects included floral patterns, birds, figures and insects.

Date letter P for 1768/69

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A rare Bow Figural Group of Two Putti with a Goat and Kid, beautifully modelled by John Toulouse, each Putto with delicate flesh tints, the first Putto riding the goat, gazing down at the Kid, who suckles from its mother, the second Putto feeding the goat with purple grapes.

Circa 1758-60 Height: 6½ ins. (16 cms.)

Marks: Impressed T for John Toulouse and numeral 2 in puce to the underside.

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A very rare model at Bow, it is possible that this group was conceived as ‘Autumn’ from a set of the seasons. This group however could represent a Bacchanalian subject and perhaps the cycle of Life. Bacchus himself is symbolic of resurrection and reincarnation and this nurture subject of the Kid that suckles from the Goat whilst being fed with grapes offered by Bacchanalian putti creates a pleasing allegorical scene. The modelling of the Putti should be compared with the single recorded circular medallion that is within the collection of Bow porcelain at the London Borough of Newham, illustrated by Anton Gabszewicz, ‘Made at New Canton’, p. 71 pl. 58. This figural group is found at a slightly later date circa 1765, when the whole model is raised up on a high scrolled base. Op cit p 102, pl. 90.

A rare Meissen Allegorical Figural Group of Venus and Cupid Riding in a Chariot, representing the Triumph of Love, modelled by J.J.Kaendler, Venus sits within a gilded shell seated chariot, wearing a bejewelled gold sash, belt and stomacher, she holds an apple in one hand, her gazing head with long flowing hair adorned with pearls and roses.

The winged Cupid stands at her right side, two Venus Love Birds at her feet and her Chariot is raised up on two highly decorative pierced porcelain wheels, with gilded highlights.

Circa 1745 Height: 6Âź ins. (16 cms.)

Length: 7½ ins. (19 cms.)

Left hand view:

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Venus goddess of Love, who was born of the shell, reclines in this baroque marine form. Her place in divine mythology and legend as pagan goddess of love is epitomised by her flowing hair, plunging dĂŠcolletage and attributes of pearls and roses and other flowers symbolic of love. The apple reminds us of the fabled beauty contest at which she was judged the winner by Paris and her prize was the Golden Apple. Her billing Doves appear at her feet whilst her acolyte, the winged Cupid, endorses her place in myth and legend as the Triumph of Love.

Right hand view:

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An extremely rare and highly important Hochst South American Parrot perched on a Rococo scrolled Stand, probably modelled by Johann Gotfried Becker and painted by Johannes Zeschinger. 1753-1755.

Height: 15Âź ins. (38.5 cms.)

Purple six spoked wheel mark to the underside of the scrolled base.

Certainly dating from the heyday of production at Hochst it is highly likely that the expert modeller was Becker, the man responsible for the best of the animal models emanating from Hochst at this very early and special period.

For the attribution to the painter Johannes Zeschinger, See Horst Reber, Die Kurmainzische Porzellan-Manufaktur Hochst.

Fayencen. P.55 no 22 which shows a fayence parrot with red mark and signature IZ and compares it to another smaller Hochst parrot recorded as being in a private Frankfurt collection.

The hand that painted the porcelain parrot is the same as that on the signed fayence example. See also P. 54 nos. 20 for the red marked and signed IZ example of a Hochst fayence parrot in the Metropolitan Museum New York. Inv. Nr 43. 100.37.

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An important pair of Meissen Squirrels, modelled by J.J.Kaendler Circa 1740

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An extremely rare and fine pair of Meissen models of squirrels, modelled by J.J.Kaendler, each Squirrel seated on its haunches and highly naturalistically modelled and each beautifully painted with ginger and brown markings, alert faces and highly pricked ears and wearing silvered collars. One Squirrel holding a nut between its paws and the other Squirrel with its paws at its feet but holding a nut in its mouth, each sitting on a naturalistically modelled oval base applied with colourful flowers and leaves.

Circa 1745 Height: 8 ins. (20.5 cms.)

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J.J.Kaendler first modelled a pair of Squirrels for the Meissen manufactory in 1732, his work records or Taxa report for the month of August that year lists, ‘Zwei Eichhornigen’. See Carl Albiker, Die Meissner Porzellantiere im 18. Jahrhundert, Berlin, 1935. No 164. It is certainly conceivable that Kaendler modelled these extremely successful naturalistic models from captive Squirrels perhaps in the Royal Menagerie at Moritzburg, which he frequently visited in order to gain inspiration and to draw from the life.

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The Paris Dihl and Guerhard Biscuit Porcelain Seated Infant Boy An extremely rare and life like Paris Dihl and Guerhard Biscuit Porcelain Seated Infant Boy, after the model by Charles Gabriel Sauvage, on a plinth, set on a simulated agate base. The child with gracefully curling hair and genial countenance, peering and reading from an open book, the rectangular plinth draped with folded material.

Circa 1795 Height: 18½ ins. (46.6 cms.)

A porcelain plaque with a portrait of Dihl by Etienne Le Guay is in the Musee de Ceramique at Sevres, in the portrait dated 1797 appears the exact model of the seated child, resting on the top of his desk. There is an example of this model within the Arkhangelskoye Palace, Russia. The modeller Sauvage had worked at the Niderviller porcelain manufactory, where he was chief modeller until the 1790’s when he started to work for Dihl.

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A rare naturalistic pair of Bow Cold Finches, each animated bird, modelled in great detail with ruffled fanned-out feathers, open beak and wide gazing eyes, perched clutching at a rocky mound modelled with exposed roots, flowers and vegetation.

Circa 1750-52 Height: 4 ¾ ins. (12 cms.) Width: 4 ins. (10.5 cms.)

This earlier version of the model, exhibits a very high degree of naturalistic modelling together with a conelike hollow support. It is one of the earliest bird models in the history of English porcelain and should be compared with the rare raised anchor models of birds manufactured at Chelsea or the plain white examples of the enigmatic ‘Girl in a Swing’ class of porcelain.

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An extremely rare Chelsea Botanical Dessert Plate of Hans Sloane Type, the circular lobed plate of rare small size and beautifully and elegantly painted with a specimen of Leucaena Leucocephala or Coffee Bush after a surviving sketch by Georg Dionysius Ehret.

Circa 1755 Diameter: 8 ins. (20.5 cms.)

Small red anchor mark to the reverse.

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This particular example of the specimen Leucaena Leucocephala or the Coffee Bush is taken directly from the original Sketch 215 from the Ehret Collection of Sketches which are held in the Library at the Natural History Museum. The original sketch was finished in 1754 and then a hand coloured engraving, which was under taken by Johann Jacob, was selected for Dr. Christoph Jakob Trew’s book of prints ‘Plantae Selectae’. Dr. Trew was the most important supporter and also purchaser of Ehret’s paintings.

A rare First Period Dr. Wall Worcester Small Printed Commemorative Mug, of straight sided cylindrical form, the front printed with quarter length portrait of William Pitt ‘The Elder’ First Earl of Chatham, resting on a wreath of fruiting laurel, to his left a figure of Britannia and to his right a figure of fame in flight over clouds, holding a trumpet in one hand and a branch of fruiting laurel in the other, with applied grooved loop handle.

Circa 1760-61 Height: 3½ ins. (9 cms.)

Provenance: The Anthony Tuke and Sir Anthony Tuke Collections.

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An extremely rare and highly important Chelsea Zoomorphic Tureen and Cover in the form of a Duck, the circular stand on which it stands adorned with marsh plants. The lower part of the tureen formed as the breast and wings, the cover formed as the upper part of the duck.

Marks: the tureen with red anchor marks and numeral 26 to both pieces, the stand with red anchor mark to the underside of the base.

Length of Duck: 6ž ins. (17.2 cms.)

Height of Duck: 3Âź ins. (8.4 cms) Diameter of the stand: 10 ins (25.5 cms.)

There are 51 duck tureens within the 1755 Chelsea sale catalogue, which lasted for 15 days from the 10th March through to the 26th, held by Mr. Ford at his Great Room in the Haymarket. As far as we know, this and only one other are currently recorded.

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Provenance: The John Hewett Senior Collection and Private English Collection.

An extremely important Pair of Chelsea Hans Sloane Circular Chargers, crisply moulded in low relief with ‘Warren Hastings’ type borders, with diaper panels and scrolled cartouches, within a shaped edge, beautifully painted in full colours with botanical specimens, the first with a large spray of fruiting almonds and leaves, together with butterflies and insects and a secondary spray of autumn crocus. The second with a huge spray of puce flowering hollyhocks and further brightly coloured butterflies, insects and beetles.

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Diameter: 11 ins. (28 cms.)

Red Anchor marks to the underside of each charger.

Provenance: W.H. Pitts collection and Private Collection.

The combination of ‘Hans Sloane’ type botanical decoration on Chelsea porcelain with the ‘Warren Hastings’ moulded or wrought edge is extremely rare and only a handful of pieces from this evidently single service survive.

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A rare Chelsea Asparagus Box and Cover, the elegantly slip cast form moulded as a bunch of pale cut asparagus tips, cut ends and side shoots tinged with puce carmine and very pale green, tied over the top with brown painted rataffia, the cover with rising sprigs of asparagus being half of the bunch.

Circa 1754 Length: 7 ins. (18 cms.)

The base with red numeral 12 to the inside.

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A Rare and Important Chelsea Billing Doves Tureen and Cover made in 1754 Sold by Mr. Ford at auction in his Great Room in the Haymarket, ‘Third Day’s Sale, Wednesday March 12th 1755, Lot 40.

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An extremely rare and highly important Chelsea Zoomorphic ‘Billing Doves’ Tureen and Cover, of the Red Anchor Period, the top cover naturalistically modelled as two doves placed together and ‘billing’ to one another, their crisply moulded wings naturally appointed, their white plumage flecked in tones of aubergine, brown and grey with their heads beautifully mottled and their beaks and eyes picked out in red, the tureen base formed as their fanned out tails and resting on rockwork which issues wild flowering Dog Rose, its leafy bracts with small clusters of single rose florets in tones of red, yellow and pastel purple.

Circa 1754-55 Length: 17 Ins. (43 cms.)

Red Anchor Mark and numeral 12 to the underside of each piece.

Provenance: The MacGregor Stewart Collection. Sold Sotheby’s London 13th November 1973. Lot 120.

Illustrated by Dr. F.S.MacKenna, Chelsea Porcelain, The Red Anchor Wares, pl. 35, no 72.

This Chelsea Tureen and Cover ‘as big as Life’ is one of the most endearing and elegant forms of the Zoomorphic Class of shapes and forms. Perhaps encouraged and inspired by the Strasbourg tin glazed examples modelled

by Paul Hannong, in the early 1750’s, the tureen form would have been of the highest possible fashion. This Chelsea form evokes an allegorical union of the Doves, which symbolises the ‘Triumph of Love’. The Billing doves, sent from Venus goddess of Love, still remains a powerful symbol of desire.

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An exceptionally fine and rare pair of Worcester Barr, Flight and Barr Candlesticks, each modelled in the form of a winged gilt and bronzed Griffin, supporting a single sconce, painted

by William Billingsley with passion flowers, roses, peonies, poppies and asters.

Circa 1804 –1813 Height: 7 ins. (18 cms.)

Marks: Impressed crown and BFB marks to underside of both.

Although the heraldic griffin can be found as a support for elaborate vase forms or urns, and in some cases a scaled down version can be found as a finial, the use as an incorporated form within a candlestick is highly unusual and of the greatest rarity, creating a highly exotic form for the lavish Regency interior.

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An important pair of Chelsea Partridge Tureens and Covers together with their Stand, each partridge modelled seated on a nest, the lower part of the tureen moulded in crisp low relief, with basket weave beneath applied sieved clay decoration and feathers, the cock and the hen bird each looking to one side, painted in tones of brown, yellow, red and black. The simulated basket weave stand moulded in relief with ears of corn, stalks and feathers strewn across the dish, with a brown line edge.

Circa 1755 Length of tureen: 5½ ins. (14 cms.)

Length of Stand: 11¾ ins. (30 cms.)

Marks: red anchor marks and numerals to the inside of each bird.

Provenance: The Paul and Helga Riley Collection.

See Chelsea Sale Catalogue of 1755, second day’s sale, Tuesday March 11th, lot 75. ‘Two very fine Partridges and a dish for ditto, finely ornamented’ and the following lot.

76. ‘Two ditto’. The dish is an extremely rare survival with only three other examples currently recorded, all in Private English Collections.

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A rare Chelsea Melon Tureen and Cover, of the large size, the naturalistically lobed body modelled on its side and moulded with the crackled skin, beautifully painted in tones of yellow, green and brown, applied with tendrils, leaves and flowers forming the handle.

Melon tureens are mentioned in the Chelsea 1755 catalogue; First Day’s Sale, Monday 10th March, p.4, lot 38: ‘Two fine melons for desart’. The tureens were copied from Meissen and were made in two sizes of which this is the largest.

Circa 1755 Length: 6½ ins. (17 cms.)

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A rare Chelsea Melon Tureen and Cover, of the large size, the naturalistically lobed body modelled on its side and moulded with the crackled skin, beautifully painted in tones of yellow, green and brown, applied with tendrils, leaves and flowers forming the handle.

Circa 1755 Length: 6½ ins. (17 cms.)

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Melon tureens are mentioned in the Chelsea 1755 catalogue; First Day’s Sale, Monday 10th March, p.4, lot 38: ‘Two fine melons for desart’. The tureens were copied from Meissen and were made in two sizes of which this is the largest.

An extremely rare and important pair of Bow Owls, crisply modelled with naturalistically coloured beaks their plumage lightly enriched in tones of brown, ochre and yellow, their delineated talons grasping tree stumps, applied with fungi, leaves, moss and flowers. Both resting on twentieth century ormolu bases.

Circa 1755-1758 Height: 8 ins (20.5 cms)

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See: Frank Stoner, Chelsea, Bow and Derby Porcelain Figures, pl. 105, Yvonne Hackenbroch, Chelsea and other English Porcelain, in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, pl.

79, fig, 259. A pair with similar ormolu mounts, sold at Sotheby’s New York Friday 18th March 2005, from the Estate of Mrs. Charles W. Engelhard. Lot 150.

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An extremely fine and rare Chelsea Hans Sloane Botanical Dessert Plate of the Red Anchor Period, of circular lobed shape, beautifully painted with an iron red and orange flower spike and long flowing serrated leaves, together with butterflies and insects in flight and secondary floral sprigs, with brown line rim.

Circa 1755 Diameter: 8¼ ins. (21 cms.)

Taken from Tab. IV of Plantae Selectae, published by Dr. Christopher James Trew, from a painting by G.D.Ehret, engraved by J.J.Haid. See also Patrick Synge-Hutchinson, ‘G.D.Ehret’s Botanical Designs’, Connoisseur, October 1948, figs. 13 and 14.

Provenance: Formerly the Lady Headford Collection. Sold 1944 Dublin, then English Private Collection.

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An extremely rare and fine Chelsea Hans Sloane Botanical Dessert Plate of the Red Anchor Period, of circular lobed shape, beautifully painted with high botanical accuracy with a large spray of fruiting fig, together with branch and leaves and a large spray of flowering Borage, with secondary floral sprigs and shadowed butterflies and insects in flight, with brown line rim.

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Circa 1755 Diameter: 8Âź ins. (21 cms.)

Provenance: Formerly the Lady Headford Collection. Sold 1944 Dublin, then English Private Collection.

An impressive and very rare Chelsea Hans Sloane Oval Platter, with lobed silver shaped edge, beautifully painted with a huge rhubarb leaf in differing tones of green with heavy veining, a group of three turnips with side fangs and a similar group of long parsnips in tones of puce and natural white, small sprigs of flowers and insects including a fritillary type butterfly, damsel fly, coachman beetle and a ladybird fill the decorative space, within a brown line rim.

Circa 1752-55 Length: 14½ ins. (37 cms.)

Red Anchor mark to the underside.

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An impressive and very rare Chelsea Hans Sloane Oval Platter, with lobed silver shaped edge, beautifully painted with a spray of fruiting Vine, showing large veined vine leaves, stalk and tendril with two bunches of purple grapes, on one side a gourd plant and several growing fruits, beneath a spray of flowering Lily of the Valley, together with other scattered sprigs of berries, flowers, a shadowed cabbage white butterfly, hawk moth caterpillar and further insects, within a brown line rim.

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Circa 1752-55 Length: 14½ ins. (37 cms.)

A fine first period Dr. Wall Worcester Teapot and Cover, of globular shape with looped handle, vividly and lavishly painted in the ‘Gentleman’s Mandarin’ palette with panels of Chinese figures seated within formal gardens, smaller panels of oriental flower and purple monochrome landscape scenes, reserved on a close patterned gold scrolled ground, the rims picked out with red lines, the domed cover with open rose finial and with similar decoration.

Circa 1770 Height: 13.5 cms.

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An early Worcester Teapot and Cover, of globular shape with rising looped handle, the slightly domed cover with acorn knop, painted in tones of underglaze blue with the ‘Dragon’ pattern.

Circa 1758 Height: 5¼ ins. (13.5 cms.)

Marks: workman’s mark in underglaze blue to the underside of the teapot.

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An early example of the pattern which spans from c. 1755-1765, the dragon pattern, was used at Gilbody, Chaffers, Vauxhall, Derby, Bow and Lowestoft. It was a pattern copied from the Chinese that proved popular with English society during the mid-eighteenth century.

The pattern is also recorded in manganese on a bowl, in a private collection, dating to c. 1755.

WHITE CYLINDERS by Gunilla Maria Åkesson Gunilla Maria Åkesson is one of Sweden’s leading ceramic artists. We are honoured to exhibit some of her latest work, which has been made especially for our Gallery.

Statement from the artist: My white cylinders were conceived as I wanted to include into my work a sense of fragility and vulnerability, together with instilling strength and calmness. These two senses of awareness are difficult to convey, but I have always had an internal feeling which I have tried to convey in the concept and expression of these cylinders. For me, the working process is always a medium to understand how such feelings are a part of my life and how they affect me on a deeper level.

My creative process has for many years led me to get my shapes thinner and thinner. I have taken one step at a time to achieve it, and now they have started to become really thin, like a veil between me and something else on the other side. Now the cylinder walls are so thin that you can see light through the porcelain.

To get the thin fragile organic surface, I build up the cylinders in sections, about 5-7 cms each time. Then I throw each section with one hand on the sculpture’s wheel, the other spinning the wheel. I make one or maybe two sections a day.

A cylinder about 50 cms high takes about two weeks to make.

Gunilla Maria Åkesson

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Bibliography Carl Albiker, Die Meissner Porzellantiere im 18 Jahrhundert (1959) Abraham L. den Blaauwen, Meissen Porcelain in The Rijksmuseum (2000) Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, The Arnhold Collection of Meissen Porcelain 1710-1750 Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, Fragile Diplomacy, Meissen Porcelain for the European Courts c. 1710-1763 Anton Gabszewicz, Made at New Canton, Bow Porcelain from The Collection of the London Borough of Newham (2000) Dr. Yvonne Hackenbroch, Chelsea and other English Porcelain, Pottery and Enamels in Irwin Untermyer Collection (1957) Jean Pillement, The Ladies Amusement, the 1959 facsimile copy of the original 1759 Publication Rainer Ruckert, Meissner Porzellan (Munich, 1966) F. Severne Mackenna, Chelsea Porcelain, Triangle & Raised Anchor Wares (1951) F. Severne Mackenna, Chelsea Porcelain, The Red Anchor Wares (1951) Rosalie Wise Sharp, Ceramics, Ethics & Scandal (2002) Frank Stoner, Chelsea, Bow and Derby Porcelain Figures

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15 Duke Street St James’s London SW1Y 6DB Tel: +44 (0)20 7 389 6550 Fax: +44 (0)207 389 6556 www.haughton.com gallery@haughton.com