Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Anton Gabszewicz Collection
Lot 123
An important Bow 'mushroom-glazed' teapot and cover, circa 1746-48
19 November 2025, 10:30 GMT
London, Knightsbridge£6,000 - £8,000
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Fergus Gambon
Director
Jim Peake
Head of Department
An important Bow 'mushroom-glazed' teapot and cover, circa 1746-48
Of small size and squat globular form, the loop handle with a spur at the lower terminal, decorated in famille verte style with flowering prunus and peony branches, a wide seeded border reserving flowerheads and smaller scattered florets, iron-red scrollwork along the spout, handle and to the pointed finial, 12.2cm high (2)
Footnotes
Provenance
Rev'd C J Sharp Collection, Sotheby's, 10 March 1964, lot 98 (as Liverpool)
Watney Collection, Phillips, 10 May 2000, lot 459
Anton Gabszewicz Collection
Literature
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), fig.9
Bow teapots of this early class are exceedingly rare. Contrary to the contemporary incised triangle tea wares being produced at Chelsea, Bow sought to interpret Chinese porcelain of the Kangxi period. The drab-coloured body and blue-grey glaze does give the soft-paste porcelain an ersatz oriental appearance.
Ramsay and Gabszewicz illustrate the present lot alongside a Bow mug with a similar seeded border in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no.C.63-1938). Like the present lot, the mug had been classified as Liverpool porcelain for much of the 20th century. The small jug, lot 124 in this sale relates very closely to the teapot, down to the fine, elegant handle with a kick at the lower terminal. The glaze pools within the confinement of the dry footrims of both pieces. On the teapot this glaze has stopped short of the footrim at one point, a hint of the characteristic 'dry apron' seen on some of the earliest pieces of Bow. A fingerprint is visible in the fine red line border, a memento of the workman who made it.