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Lot 398

A fine Swansea plate circa 1815-17

18 May 2016, 10:30 BST
London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £4,000 inc. premium

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A fine Swansea plate circa 1815-17

Thinly potted and of small size, painted in London by J Bradley and Co with 'The Quan or Guan', the brightly coloured bird standing beside a rustic fence, the crisp C-scroll border painted with fruit and flower sprigs, gilt dentil rim, 20.6cm diam, title in distinctive red script to the reverse

Footnotes

This plate belongs to a service painted in London at the workshops of John Bradley in Pall Mall, remarkable for the fine quality of the bird painting. Three pieces from the service were sold by Bonhams, 7 December 2005, lots 279-281. Lot 279 was painted with a 'Transverse Striped or Bared Dove' and was also inscribed 'J Bradley and Co, No 47 Pall Mall, London' in the same hand as the present lot. The decoration must have taken place after 1821 when buildings in Pall Mall were renumbered and the Bradley premises allocated number 21. The firm's adverts proclaimed 'enamelling done on the premises'. Other examples from the service are in the National Museum of Wales, illustrated by Oliver Fairclough, The London China Trade 1800-1830, ECC Trans, Vol 16 Pt 2, p 206, in the Lady Ludlow Collection at The Bowes Museum, illustrated in the catalogue (2007) by Anne McNair, p 308 and in the Andrews Collection on display at Plas Glyn y Weddw, Llanbedrog. The source for the bird paintings was George Edwards's Natural History of Uncommon Birds, published between 1743 and 1751. The 'QUAN or GUAN, so-called in the West Indies' is illustrated in Vol 1, pl 13 and is shown here. Interestingly, the same print was the source for a model of a guan produced at Chelsea in the raised anchor period. See John C Austin, Chelsea Porcelain at Williamsburg (1977), p 120.

Additional information

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