Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
Lot 61
An extraordinary Vauxhall sauceboat, circa 1754-55
1 December 2025, 13:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£3,000 - £5,000
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Jim Peake
Head of Department
Fergus Gambon
Director
An extraordinary Vauxhall sauceboat, circa 1754-55
Of low form with a shaped rim, the thumbrest of the scrolled handle unusually modelled as a reclining monkey, finely painted with European scenes in the manner of J H O'Neale, one side with a cow and goat wading by bulrushes, the other with a milkmaid milking, the interior with two soldiers fighting, one having just been thrown from his horse, with a brown line rim, 21cm long
Footnotes
Provenance
Sotheby's, 11 May 1971, lot 113 (as William Ball, Liverpool)
Simon Spero exhibition, 1996, no.9
Richard Miller Collection
Tony and Thelma Beale Collection, Simon Spero exhibition, 2017, no.1
Literature
Watney, Bernard, 'The Vauxhall China Works 1751-1764', ECC Trans, Vol.13, Pt.3, 1989, pl.206a.
Spero, Simon, 'Vauxhall Porcelain - A Tentative Chronology', ECC Trans, Vol.18, Pt.2, 2003, p.365, fig.51
White, Mary, 'Luxury porcelain decoration in London 1750-55: O'Neale and London Ateliers', ECC Trans, Vol.30, 2019, p.46, figs.31 and 32
White, Mary, Beasts at the Whites' House, Vol.1, 2020, p.20
The decoration on this sauceboat is truly exceptional. Simon Spero notes that it is indeed without precedent at Vauxhall and that with the exception of some pieces of Chelsea porcelain, the style and subject is unknown in English factories of the 1750s. The bucolic scenes depicted on the exterior of the sauceboat are very close in style and execution to those found on Chelsea attributed to J H O'Neale, see for example a pair of Chelsea plates painted with fable scenes illustrated by Stephen Hanscombe, Jefferyes Hamett O'Neale, 2010, figs.28 and 29. The skirmish painted to the interior seems at odds with the pastoral scenes on the sides but this too resembles O'Neale's painting. See the teacup painted in puce monochrome illustrated by Elizabeth Adams, Chelsea Porcelain, 2001, p.107, fig.8.16.
Two sauceboats of this form painted in underglaze blue are illustrated by Massey, Marno and Spero, Ceramics of Vauxhall, 2007, nos.78 and 79.