An impressive Liverpool (Richard Chaffers) beaker vase, circa 1756-60

Footnotes

Provenance
Thomas Grant Dixon Collection, bequeathed to Ampleforth Abbey
Sotheby's, 13 April 2011, lot 204

Literature
Hillis, Maurice, Liverpool Porcelain, 2011, p.214
Manners, Errol, 'A group of London Porcelains in search of a home: the case for Kentish Town', ECC Trans, Vol.29, 2018, p.221
Hillis, Maurice, 'Some thoughts on the outside decoration of Liverpool ceramics', ECC Trans, Vol.31, 2020, p.137
White, Mary, Living at the Whites' House, Vol.4, 2023, p.354

As the paper label for the Grant Dixon Collection suggests, this vase was long-considered to be Worcester. Another vase, very likely to be the pair to the present lot, is in the Ashmolean Museum (inv. no.WA1957.24.1.389). It is illustrated by Henry Rissik Marshall in Coloured Worcester Porcelain, 1954, pl.43, no.890 and was gifted by the author to the Museum in 1957.

Richard Chaffers' factory produced steatitic porcelain not unlike Worcester and so the earlier misattribution is understandable. The Ashmolean vase is illustrated by Maurice Hillis, 2011, pp.163 and 213 and the present lot is referred to on p.214. The Ashmolean is also illustrated by Hillis, 2020, p.137, fig.22 and fig.23, showing how the shape of the footrim closely corresponds to that on a Chaffers' blue and white jug. In both publications the author refutes the theory that these vases were decorated in either London or Staffordshire. It has been suggested that the Ashmolean vase and the present lot might have not only been decorated in London but manufactured there entirely in the short-lived John Bolton factory of Kentish Town, see Manners, 2018, p.221-222.

Another pair of vases closely resembling the present lot and the Ashmolean example, although much smaller, was in the Collection of Mr and Mrs James MacHarg, sold by Sotheby's on 10 May 1966, lot 89. It seems that more research into this fascinating group may be yet forthcoming.