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An important Limehouse covered punch bowl, circa 1746-48 image 1
An important Limehouse covered punch bowl, circa 1746-48 image 2
An important Limehouse covered punch bowl, circa 1746-48 image 3
An important Limehouse covered punch bowl, circa 1746-48 image 4
Lot 42

An important Limehouse covered punch bowl, circa 1746-48

30 June 2010, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £34,800 inc. premium

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An important Limehouse covered punch bowl, circa 1746-48

The round body supported on three lion mask feet, with modelled scroll and shell handles and a double knop finial, painted in blue with maidens and putti, possibly representing Water, the two main sides painted with a putto riding on a dolphin led by another putto blowing a horn, the reverse with a maiden seated on a spouting dolphin reaching out to take a shell or instrument from a putto alongside, the cover with a further maiden and a putto riding alongside on separate dolphins, a further putto on a spouting dolphin beside a rocky island with a gushing spring, large vine leaves painted beneath both handles and inside the cover, a bunch of grapes in the base of the tureen, 17.5cm wide across handles, 22cm high (cracked and riveted, rim chip, one handle replaced)

Footnotes

Provenance: purchased from Mercury Antiques (Mrs Richards). Illustrated by Geoffrey Godden, English Blue and White Porcelain (2004), colour pls. 21 and 22 and pls. 104-105. Three other examples are recorded, each apparently painted by the same hand. One is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (C260-1938) and is illustrated by Geoffrey Godden (op cit 2004) pls. 102-103. Another is in the Watney Collection, illustrated on the front and back cover of the ECC Transactions, Vol. 17, Part 1 (1999) as a tribute to Bernard Watney. The final example, lacking its cover, is in Liverpool Museum. The distinctive style of painting represented by these punch bowls is Continental rather than English. The placing of vine leaves and grapes in all of the available spaces on this piece strongly suggest that these bowls were for serving mulled wine or punch. The delightfully constructed rivets are clearly very early and may well be contemporary with the bowl itself, as they secure cracks that extend from an original firing crack. It is also possible this bowl cracked when used with hot mulled wine.

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