Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Lot 128
A rare Limehouse cup, circa 1746-48
1 December 2025, 13:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£4,000 - £6,000
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Jim Peake
Head of Department
Fergus Gambon
Director
A rare Limehouse cup, circa 1746-48
Of quatrelobed form moulded with irregular spiral ribbing simulating a shell, the rim slightly everted, the crabstock handle with a delicate protruding thumbrest, its extending stalk terminals crisply moulded with flowering prunus encircling the cup and picked out in blue, the interior painted with a floret and with a meandering floral border below the rim, 6.2cm high
Footnotes
Provenance
Christie's, 16 November 2010, lot 56 (part)
With Simon Spero, 2010
Literature
White, Mary, Drinking at the Whites' House, Vol.2, 2021, p.312, fig.b
Fragments of similar cups were found on the Limehouse factory site and are illustrated in the ECC's Limehouse Ware Revealed, 1993, p.65, figs.137 and 139. A white example of identical form is illustrated on p.65, fig.140, alongside a closely related creamware cup attributed to the Pomona Potworks at Newcastle-under-Lyme, lot 127 in this sale. A very similar cup from the Geoffrey Godden Collection was sold by Bonhams on 30 June 2010, lot 40. This is illustrated by Geoffrey Godden, English Blue and White Porcelain, 2004, p.93, pl.96 and by John Potter, 'The Limehouse Story', in David Barker and Sam Cole, Digging for Early Porcelain, 1998, p.51, fig.17 alongside the fragments from the factory site. See also the example illustrated by Ray Jones, The Origins of Worcester Porcelain, 2018, p.218, no.ii, and that from the Billie Pain Collection sold by Bonhams on 26 November 2003, lot 95. A unique example with its matching saucer from the Watney Collection was sold by Phillips on 10 May 2000, lot 545, reproduced by Kieron Tyler and Roy Stephenson, The Limehouse Porcelain Manufactory, 2000, p.51, fig.86.