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An important Lund's Bristol coffee cup, circa 1748-51 image 1
An important Lund's Bristol coffee cup, circa 1748-51 image 2
Lot 51

An important Lund's Bristol coffee cup, circa 1748-51

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

Sold for £5,760 inc. premium

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An important Lund's Bristol coffee cup, circa 1748-51

of plain 'U' shape, the moulded angular handle with a raised thumbrest, painted in blue with a very stylised Chinese riverscape including an angler in a sampan, 'floating rocks', a mirrored island with pylon trees, dotted mountain peaks and 'three dot' motifs, beneath a diaper border painted in blue between lightly incised grooves, blue comma motifs either side of the handle terminals, 5.9cm high (minute blemishes on the rim and footrim possibly during manufacture)

Footnotes

Illustrated by Geoffrey Godden, English Blue and White Porcelain (2004), colour pl. 28 and pl. 131, also 18th Century English Porcelain, A Selection from the Godden Reference Collection (1985) fig. 17, pls. 48-49. A curious feature, unique to this single cup, is the use of incised lines as a guide to the painter for the placing of the border pattern. This curious technique may give a clue to the firing processes in use at the Lund's Bristol factory. The painter could only incise his guide lines into soft, unfired paste. Shards found in the lowest levels at Worcester showed blue painting on a lightly-fired but un-vitrified biscuit porcelain. This will have been glazed and vitrified together in a higher-temperature gloss kiln. This Chinese method of a low biscuit firing and high gloss firing can explain the tendency of Lund's blue decoration to blur. Worcester soon abandoned this method and following a higher biscuit firing, they introduced a hardening-on firing for the blue before glazing.

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