Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Lot 186
An early Worcester plate, circa 1752-53
1 December 2025, 13:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£1,000 - £1,500
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Jim Peake
Head of Department
Fergus Gambon
Director
An early Worcester plate, circa 1752-53
Painted in blue with the 'Writhing Rocks' pattern, a 'Long Eliza' figure holding a flower basket, standing in a landscape below an overhanging rockface, beside hollow rockwork and a pine tree, within a neat border of panels of flowering plants reserved on a diaper pattern ground, the reverse of the rim with precious objects, 23.2cm diam, pseudo Chinese character marks within concentric circles
Footnotes
Provenance
Zorensky Collection
Bonhams, 10 December 2008, lot 146
Beechwood Collection, Simon Spero exhibition, 2016, no.28
Literature
Jones, Ray, The Origins of Worcester Porcelain,, 2018, p.457
White, Mary, Eating at the Whites' House, Vol.3, 2022, p.269
Excavations on the Warmstry House site give evidence that plates like this were among the earliest products at Worcester, although their production was short-lived. Both Worcester and Chelsea made initial attempts to compete with Chinese export porcelain plates but seemingly focussed their attention on smaller tea and coffee wares and ornamental porcelains. The painting on Worcester's early plates is careful and is a faithful, if not entirely accurate attempt to copy Chinese blue and white porcelain from earlier in the 18th century, even down to the pseudo-Chinese marks. On the present lot two of the Chinese characters seem to resemble 'Cheng Hua', which would have probably been drawn from the underside of a Kangxi plate with similar border design, the painter at Worcester blissfully unaware of the meaning. By the 1750s old Chinese porcelain appealed to connoisseur collectors and Worcester probably saw a market for their copies of these plates, rather than mere reproductions of contemporary blue and white imports.
Another plate of this pattern is illustrated Branyan, French and Sandon, Worcester Blue and White Porcelain, 1990, p.45, no.I.A.5 and Simon Spero, Lund's Bristol and Early Worcester Porcelain 1750-58: The A J Smith Collection, 2006, p.100, fig.21. Early plates were also produced with the 'Zig-Zag Fence Bird' pattern, see for example that from the Pauline and David Tate Collection sold by Bonhams on 27 November 2024, lot 192. See also the plate with 'Boys at Play' pattern from the Geoffrey Godden Collection, sold by Bonhams on 30 June 2010, lot 56.