Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Lot 103
An important Chelsea 'Goat and Bee' jug, circa 1745
1 December 2025, 13:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£3,000 - £4,000
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Jim Peake
Head of Department
Fergus Gambon
Director
An important Chelsea 'Goat and Bee' jug, circa 1745
Of pear shape, supported by two goats recumbent nose to tail on grass, applied in high relief with a finely modelled and naturalistically coloured bee, set on a delicately coloured flowering branch in lower relief, the handle modelled as an oak branch applied with leaves, 10.7cm high, incised triangle mark and 'Chelsea' in script
Footnotes
Provenance
Radford Collection, Sotheby's, 3 November 1943, lot 86
With D M & P Manheim, New York, April 1949
Sarah Belk Gambrell Collection
With E & H Manners, 2022
Literature
The Magazine Antiques, Vol.LV, No.5, May 1949, p.325
White, Mary, Eating at the Whites' House, Vol.3, 2022, p.347, fig.a
Coloured 'Goat and Bee' jugs are considerably rarer than those left in the white and only one other similarly marked coloured example would appear to be recorded, inscribed 'Chelsea 1745' and now in the Bowes Museum, see Anne McNair, Catalogue of the Lady Ludlow Collection of English Porcelain, 2007, pp.68-9, no.46. Other jugs bearing this rare script mark are undecorated, and include one from the Katz Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (inv. no.1988.700) and another in the British Museum (inv. no.1887,0307,II.16).
A small number of important documentary white examples inscribed and dated 'Chelsea 1745' are also recorded, including a celebrated example in the British Museum (inv. no.1905,0218.6) illustrated by Elizabeth Adams, Chelsea Porcelain, 2001, p.29, figs.3.8 and 3.9. A further inscribed and dated white jug is in the Bowes Museum (inv. no.1571734). Mary White suggests that these marks, together with the innovative design of these jugs, may have been a way of cementing the name of this pioneering new factory. It is interesting to note that at least two different hands appear to have been responsible for these script marks.
Paul Crane notes the similarity between the recumbent goats on the base of these jugs and the base of the silver Ashburnham centrepiece made by Nicholas Sprimont, see Crane's paper 'Nature, Porcelain and the Age of Enlightenment', Art Antiques London, 2015. A woodblock print dated 1530 by Domenico Campagnola has been suggested as another possible source for the design, see Zorka Hodgson, 'Survey of the Sources of Inspiration for the Goat and Bee jug and some other noted Chelsea creations', ECC Trans, Vol.14, Pt.1, 1990, p.40, figs.21 and 22.