Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Lot 190
A Vauxhall cream jug, circa 1755-56
1 December 2025, 13:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£700 - £1,000
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Jim Peake
Head of Department
Fergus Gambon
Director
A Vauxhall cream jug, circa 1755-56
Of quatrelobed section with a rococo scroll-moulded foot and exuberant scrolled handle, crisply moulded with diaper panels picked out with black enamel dots and edged in iron red, flanked by insects and floral sprigs printed in outline in puce and hand-coloured, 9.2cm high
Footnotes
Provenance
Knowles Boney Collection, Sotheby's, 5 June 1967, lot 256
Margaret Warburton Collection
Billie Pain Collection, Bonhams, 26 November 2003, lot 285
Literature
Massey, R, Marno, F, and Spero, S, Ceramics of Vauxhall, 2007, p.56, no.58
White, Mary, Eating at the Whites' House, Vol.3, 2022, p.350, fig.a
Exhibited
Hillis, Maurice and Jellicoe, Roderick, The Liverpool Porcelain of William Reid, 2000, p.21, no.31
A saltglaze stoneware jug with the same crisp diaper moulding is illustrated by Massey, Marno and Spero, 2007, p.56 and is presumably the inspiration for the present lot. The influence of saltglaze is apparent in a number of forms produced at Vauxhall, including a dish in the Watney Collection sold by Phillips on 10 May 2000, lot 720. The technique of printing in outline in a number of colours and then filling-in by hand is a process almost entirely particular to Vauxhall. Another jug with printed insects was in the Watney Collection, as lot 731. Only one example is recorded with underglaze blue decoration.
It is interesting to compare this jug with the very similar form produced by William Reid at Liverpool, lot 191 in this sale. Mary White illustrates both jugs side-by-side and notes the difference in the whiter paste and greenish glaze of the present lot compared to the grey body of the Reid jug, where a blueish glaze pools slightly around the rococo moulding. Both jugs were exhibited together in 2000, see Hillis and Jellicoe, 2000, p.21, nos.31 and 32.