Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Anton Gabszewicz Collection
Lot 125
An early Bow saucer and a plate, circa 1750-52
19 November 2025, 10:30 GMT
London, Knightsbridge£300 - £500
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Fergus Gambon
Director
Jim Peake
Head of Department
An early Bow saucer and a plate, circa 1750-52
Both painted in a naïve oriental style and vivid blue, the saucer with the 'two-storied shelter' design, an island with 'pylon' trees and a sampan with billowing sail, 11.5cm diam, the plate with chrysanthemum and bamboo, the cavetto washed in blue below a border of further flowering plants, 22.5cm diam (2)
Footnotes
Provenance
Gilbert Bradley Collection, Christie's, 12 October 1981, lot 20 (plate)
Watney Collection, Phillips, 1 November 2000, lot 841 (part) (saucer)
Anton Gabszewicz Collection
Literature
Anton Gabszewicz and Jacqui Pearce, 'Bow porcelain revealed: finds from excavations in High Street, Stratford, 2006, Part II', ECC Trans, Vol.32 (2021-22), fig.69:1 (saucer)
Gabszewicz and Pearce illustrate this saucer as an example of the earliest iteration of 'sketchy river islands' produced at Bow, and include related sherds excavated at the factory site, see p.38, fig.68:1 and p.39, fig.69:1-2. Bernard Watney illustrates a plate identical to the present lot formerly in the Ainslie Collection, see English Blue and White Porcelain of the eighteenth century (1973), pl.8C.