Jim Peake
Head of Department
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Lot 130
A good Chelsea 'Goat and Bee' jug, circa 1745-47
29 September 2020, 10:30 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £5,062.50 inc. premium
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Fergus Gambon
Director
A good Chelsea 'Goat and Bee' jug, circa 1745-47
Of pear shape supported by two goats recumbent nose to tail, the handle modelled as an oak branch with leaves applied at both terminals, applied in high relief beneath the lip with a finely modelled and naturalistically coloured bee, set on a delicately coloured flowering branch in lower relief, brown line rim, 11.2cm high, incised triangle mark
Footnotes
Provenance
With Stafford's, London (old paper label to base)
An uncoloured example is illustrated by Paul Crane, Nature, Porcelain and the Age of Enlightenment, in Art Antiques London (2015), where the similarity between the recumbent goats on the base of the jug and base of the silver Ashburnham centrepiece made by Nicholas Sprimont is noted. Another possible source for the design has been suggested by Zorka Hodgson, Sources of inspiration for the Goat and Bee jug and other Chelsea creations, ECC Trans, Vol.14, Pt.1 (1990), p.40, figs.21 and 22 where a woodblock print by Domenico Campagnola (1500-1564) is suggested. Coloured 'Goat and Bee' jugs are much rarer than white versions. For other examples see Margaret Legge, Flowers and Fables (1984), p.25, fig.3, John C Austin, Chelsea Porcelain at Williamsburg (1977), p.24, fig.6, and the F S Mackenna Collection of English Porcelain, Pt.1 (1972), p.60, fig.19. A coloured example was sold by Bonhams on 21 May 2014, lot 49 and another on 5 June 2019, lot 130.