Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Anton Gabszewicz Collection
Lot 126
Two interesting Bow sauceboats, circa 1749-50
19 November 2025, 10:30 GMT
London, Knightsbridge£400 - £600
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Fergus Gambon
Director
Jim Peake
Head of Department
Two interesting Bow sauceboats, circa 1749-50
The larger, bellied sauceboat raised on three crisply modelled paw feet with snarling lion mask terminals, the scrolled handle also with an unusual human mask, painted in a strong tone of blue with flowering peony and bamboo by a fence, foliate borders below the shaped rim, 23cm long, painter's mark 'g', the smaller sauceboat with three lion mask feet, painted in blue with trailing flowers and hollow rockwork, a scroll border below the interior rim, 18.7cm long (2)
Footnotes
Provenance
Raymond Yarbrough Collection (larger sauceboat)
Anton Gabszewicz Collection
Literature
Raymond Yarbrough, Bow Porcelain and the London Theatre (1996), no.57, p.112, fig.166 (larger sauceboat)
Nicholas Panes, British Porcelain Sauceboats of the 18th Century (2009), p.71, fig.104 (larger sauceboat)
Anton Gabszewicz, 'Influence of the Baroque on English porcelain' in Fire and Form (2013), p.212, fig.8
The fine detailing on the lion and paw feet indicates a very early date. Yarbrough draws attention to the rare human mask at the upper handle terminal, a feature which does not appear on later examples of this shape. The blue hatched floral border below the interior rim should be compared with the naïve gilt decoration on contemporary Bow rococo-moulded sauceboats, see the dragon-handled example also formerly in the Yarbrough Collection, which is lot 140 in this sale.
Nicholas Panes illustrates a sauceboat similar to the smaller example in this lot at p.70, figs.102-103. Curiously, the example included in the present lot is lacking the customary paw feet. However, the stumps where they would have been joined to the lions' masks have been glazed over, revealing that it was still deemed worth decorating and firing this experimental piece. This form relates to the marginally earlier 'flying' handle sauceboat of 'mushroom-glazed' class, lot 144 in this sale.