Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Anton Gabszewicz Collection
Lot 134
An early Bow teapot and cover and a sugar bowl, circa 1748-50
19 November 2025, 10:30 GMT
London, Knightsbridge£600 - £800
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Fergus Gambon
Director
Jim Peake
Head of Department
An early Bow teapot and cover and a sugar bowl, circa 1748-50
The teapot of compressed globular form, the elaborately scrolled handle with un usual thumbrest and pronounced kick, applied in high relief with flowering prunus sprays, the low domed cover with three smaller sprigs and a wicker finial, 11.5cm high, incised 'R' mark, the sugar bowl with an everted and shaped rim, applied with three crisp prunus sprigs, left in the white, 7.2cm high, incised 'R' mark (3)
Footnotes
Provenance
Rev'd David Thornton Collection (sugar bowl)
Judy and Phelps Bell Collection, Bonhams, 20 November 2019, lot 178 (teapot)
Anton Gabszewicz Collection
Although there are small differences in the applied prunus - namely the plain or 'target' style centres to each flowerhead - both the teapot and sugar bowl are marked with an incised 'R' and would appear to belong to the earliest group of 'sprig'd' produced at Bow. Anton Gabszewicz illustrates an 'R' marked creamjug in the Victoria & Albert Museum in his paper 'Bow Porcelain: The Incised 'R' Marked Group and Associated Wares', ECC Trans, Vol.17, Pt.2 (2000), p.285, fig.33, which relates very closely to the teapot, both in regards to its scrolled handle and in the exact detailing of the prunus sprigs. Interestingly, a chocolate cup and saucer illustrated as fig.54 in the same paper are also 'R' marked and the 'looped' sprigs correspond to those seen on the sugar bowl in this lot.
A similar teapot is illustrated by Simon Spero in his 2011 exhibition catalogue where the slightly grey-toned body is noted as a feature of this earlier class, as well as the elaborately modelled handle, which relates to the V&A creamjug, inv. no.C.135-1945.