Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Lot 17
A rare Elers Brothers redware mug, circa 1695
1 December 2025, 13:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£1,200 - £1,500
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Jim Peake
Head of Department
Fergus Gambon
Director
A rare Elers Brothers redware mug, circa 1695
The cylindrical form slip-cast and lathe-turned, applied with a grooved strap handle, with two broad bands of sprigged decoration including floral branches, flanked on both sides by wyverns and dancing men or 'Merry Andrews', divided by three neat grooved concentric bands, 11.6cm high
Footnotes
Provenance
Sampson and Horne Collection, Bonhams, 28 April 2010, lot 110
Literature
White, Mary, Drinking at the Whites' House, Vol.2, 2021, p.90
Exhibited
Sampson and Horne, 2009, pp.36-7, fig.A
John Philip and David Elers were Dutch silversmiths who produced high quality red stoneware at Bradwell Wood in Staffordshire for a brief period between circa 1690 and 1698, their establishment being last recorded in 1697. Their distinctive wares were slip-cast in plaster moulds and the exteriors neatly turned using a lathe, as detailed in a document of 1794 written by Josiah Wedgwood, see Gordon Elliott, John and David Elers, 1998, p.18. The crispness of the sprigged decoration is consistent with the use of metal dies, as indicated by the slight roughness surrounding these reliefs.
An almost identical mug with similar sprigged decoration and mounted with a silver rim, from the Henry Weldon Collection, is illustrated by Leslie B Grigsby, English Pottery 1650-1800, 1990, pp.62-3, no.5a-d. The sprigged elements on both mugs match those on one illustrated by Gordon Elliot, 'Staffordshire Red and Black Stonewares', ECC Trans, Vol.10, Pt.2, pl.38(b) and another in the Fitzwilliam Museum illustrated by Bernard Rackham, Catalogue of the Glaisher Collection of Pottery and Porcelain, 1935, pp.73-4 and pl.34D, no.454.