John Sandon
Consultant
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Lot 95
An exceptional Limehouse teapot and a cover, circa 1746-48
13 April 2016, 10:30 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £12,500 inc. premium
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Fergus Gambon
Director
An exceptional Limehouse teapot and a cover, circa 1746-48
Of small size with a slightly-squat globular body and plain handle and spout, painted on both sides with European landscapes, the front with a shepherd driving two sheep across a stream, a ruined arch to one side, the reverse with a traveller in a landscape, a tall building, perhaps an inn on the left hand side, a series of individual vine leaves painted around the handle and spout, the cover painted with a Chinese style flowering peony branch, 10cm high (spout restuck, section of the cover rim also restuck) (2)
Footnotes
Provenance:
Sold by Sotheby's 3 July 1979, lot 134
Illustrated in the ECC's Limehouse Ware Revealed (1993), p.46, fig.105 and p.51, fig.VII.
European landscape decoration on Limehouse falls into two distinct groups. One features large and prominent figures, while in the other group represented here the figures are diminutive with the emphasis on the landscape itself, the scenes framed by trees and buildings. The scene on the reverse of this teapot is almost identical to a Limehouse pickle dish that was in the Watney collection, Pt.1, lot 127, illustrated by Geoffrey Godden, English Blue and White Porcelain, p.90, pl.24. The tall farmhouse on the left is very similar to one on a tureen illustrated by Bernard Watney, English Blue and White (1963/1973), pl.43D. More significantly, a very similar building is seen on the only other teapot of this type so far recorded, in the Rosalie Sharp collection, illustrated (with a Chinese cover) in China to Light up a House (2015), p.175, fig.594.