Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Anton Gabszewicz Collection
Lot 121
A rare and early Bow 'mushroom-glazed' shell salt, circa 1746-49
19 November 2025, 10:30 GMT
London, Knightsbridge£2,500 - £3,500
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Fergus Gambon
Director
Jim Peake
Head of Department
A rare and early Bow 'mushroom-glazed' shell salt, circa 1746-49
Crisply modelled as a shell nestled on a rockwork base applied with seaweed and smaller shells, the interior painted with a trailing branch with blue and puce flowers below a brown line rim, the exterior with three floral sprigs, the weed-encrusted base picked out in a copper green, 9.2cm wide
Footnotes
Provenance
Frank Wheeldon Collection, Bonhams, 23 January 2008, lot 22
Anton Gabszewicz Collection
A similar pair of shell salts is illustrated by Anton Gabszewicz and Geoffrey Freeman, Bow Porcelain (1982), p.23., pl.2. These were formerly in the Collection of Frank Hurlbutt who discusses them in Bow Porcelain (1926), p.95 and pl.16(b) noting the 'drab' body and glaze, a class subsequently termed 'mushroom-glazed'. The potential link between these early Bow wares and the 'A'-marked group is discussed by Ross Ramsay and Anton Gabszewicz, 'The Chemistry of 'A'-Marked Porcelain and its relation to the Heylyn and Frye Patent of 1744', ECC Trans, Vol.18, Pt.2 (2003), pp.272-3. A single shell salt with very sparingly applied enamel decoration is illustrated by Gabszewicz, Made At New Canton (2000), p.50, pl.35.
It is interesting to compare this with lot 122, also in the Gabszewicz Collection, for a contemporary outside-painted Chelsea salt of remarkably similar form but much varied in the paste, glaze and decoration.