Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Lot 181*
A rare Limehouse large sauceboat, circa 1746-48
19 November 2025, 10:30 GMT
London, Knightsbridge£3,000 - £5,000
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Fergus Gambon
Director
Jim Peake
Head of Department
A rare Limehouse large sauceboat, circa 1746-48
Of wide six-sided form, the flat base with a splayed footrim with a zig-zag border, the sides moulded with overlapping shell-like leaves, the distinctive crabstock handle with a leaf thumbrest, the two reserved side panels painted in blue with European landscapes, one with distant buildings beyond a wooded lake, the other with two swans before a ruined monument and further buildings in the distance, the interior painted with a thorny rose spray, further undulating leafy rose sprays to the interior rim, vine leaves by the lip and handle, 21cm long
Footnotes
The low form of this sauceboat without a foot is highly unusual. Both the European landscape painting and rose sprays are certainly by the same hand responsible for the decoration on an important Limehouse punch tureen from the Watney Collection, sold by Bonhams on 19 June 2024, lot 267. The ruined monument is a motif that probably appeared for the first time on Limehouse, and is a motif which appears on some smaller sauceboats traditionally attributed to Limehouse but now considered likely to be Lund's Bristol, see for example that from the Watney Collection sold by Bonhams on 19 June 2024, lot 270.
A very similar sauceboat is illustrated in the ECC's Limehouse Ware Revealed (1993), pp.36-7, figs.65 and 68, together with matching sauceboat fragments excavated from the factory site in figs.66 and 67, and also by Ray Jones, The Origins of Worcester Porcelain (2018), pp.232-3. This is also illustrated by Geoffrey Godden, An Introduction to English Blue and White Porcelains (1974), pl.19, fig.96, by John Potter, 'The Search for the Limehouse Pottery', Morley College Ceramics Circle Bulletin (1992), fig.13, by Geoffrey Godden, English Blue and White Porcelain (2004), p.74 and pp.80-1, col. pl.12 and pls.79 and 80, by Nicholas Panes, British Porcelain Sauceboats (2009), p.50, fig.69, and was sold by Bonhams as part of the Geoffrey Godden Collection on 30 June 2010, lot 43.