Images of the 2006 Sauceboat Exhibition:       See Below

   Members pieces from recent Miscellany meetings:

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THE ENGLISH CERAMIC CIRCLE

MEMBERS EXHIBITION 2006

BRITISH SAUCEBOATS
1720-1850

Exhibition held at Stockspring Antiques, 8th - 17th June 2006

A selection from the 175 sauceboats illustrated on the Exhibition 

catalogue CD Rom, which can be purchased for £11 including postage.  

Comments:                 This highly unusual design is probably modelled d quality

on the Meissen sauceboats of the period (see 

the Meissen example inset).  It has good quality 

painted flower decoration. The shape was far 

more popular in Germany, where it continued 

until the late in the century.

This colourful decoration is very rare and known as the Bold 

Famille Rose Group.  It is very doubtful whether it was done at 

the Limehouse factory and opinions vary as to whether the painting

was executed in London by Dutch painters that had settled there, 

or in Holland itself, although the former is now widely accepted.
Ref: Manners E.; The English Decoration of Oriental Porcelain: some 
overlooked groups; ECC Trans. Vol. 19 Pt. 1.

The design of this saltglaze piece seems to carry many influences. The 

rippling top rim was seen in plain Chinese sauceboats and also in delft, 

and the moulding, arguably demonstrating that silver could be emulated, 

was a strong demonstration of the Staffordshire mould maker's art.  

The use of one forward leg and two at the rear and one at the front is 

unusual.  The end result, despite the many influences, is uniquely English.

The small size and attractive interior 

decoration of this Bow sauceboat, together 

with the rarer two front and one rear leg 

configuration, make it a desirable and highly 

attractive piece.

Comments:

A very rare Vauxhall sauceboat of plain form with undulating rim 

and on three legs.  One of perhaps only three recorded, decorated 

over printed outlines with fine polychrome flowers, the painting

probably based on contemporary drawing books of botanical prints.

24.    

Body:           Porcelain - soft paste 

Factory:        Bow
Date:            1750-52
Dimensions:   21cms                                 
Mark:            None

Comments:

This wonderful rococco design was unique to Bow, although

it might have been influenced by Lunds Bristol who produced 

a garlanded sauceboat with ornate handle design.  The design was

at odds with Bow's principal target market to compete with blue 

and white Chinese wares, but it must have been fairly successful 

in achieving sales as a number survive.

Comments:

An unusual and delightful Longton Hall sauceboat 

based on a silver shape. Of shell formed fluted design, 

decorated on one side with a woodpecker and with a 

sitting water bird on the reverse.

Comments:

Fairly similar in design to a Worcester example number 35 in the 

catalogue, this Liverpool example is decorated in underglaze blue 

with a figure on a bridge.  The moulding is different and the flutes 

on the Worcester version are missing.

Comments:

A very fine sauceboat with silver style moulding to the lower half, painted 

with a fisherman in underglaze blue within a moulded cartouche.

This J Pennington sauceboat is nicely moulded with silver styled

features in the lower half, and branches and a scrolled cartouche 

above.  The handle is double scrolled with a thumb-rest.  Decoration 

is a simple Willow and fence pattern with a large leafed plant.

Comments:

A rococco fluted helmet shaped sauceboat with a triple scroll handle.  

Painted with naive flower sprays.

58.    
Body:              Porcelain - Hard Paste
Factory:           Plymouth
Date:               1768-70
Dimensions:     14.0cms
Mark:              None

Comments:

This rococo silver influenced design is strongly associated

with William Cookworthy's work at Plymouth, producing 

the first real hard paste in England.  This example is 

painted simply with a flower spray.  The silver example 

shown is dated 1750.

Comments:

One of around six known shapes of Isleworth sauceboat.  Moulded

with flowers around a central cartouche with painted flower spray.

74.    
Body:              Earthenware - Creamware
Factory:           Possibly Yorkshire
Date:               c 1775
Dimensions:     18.5cms
Mark:               None

Comments:

A nice creamware sauceboat with rope twist handles, linear 

body flutes following the shell moulded form, and leaf moulded 

border.  Rococo silver shape.

80.    
Body:            Porcelain - experimental hard paste          
Factory:         Unknown
Date:             1780-90
Dimensions:    20cms
Mark:             None

Comments:

Previously attributed to Caughley at the time of the Watney

Sales, this attribution has now been discounted and the piece 

remains a mystery with tentative suggestions of a Worksworth 

or Church Gresley attribution.  

Illustrated and discussed in Godden's Guide to English

Blue and White Porcelain.

Comments:

This design appears to have been the most popular boat produced 
by the factory, whose concentration on decorative wares meant that few 
sauceboats were made. It has a tree branch handle moulded with flowers 
and leaves. Fine flower paining in polychrome. It was made with a
strawberry leaf moulded stand. 

Comments:

An attractive leaf moulded sauceboat so typical of the quirky output of 

the Longton Hall factory.  With naturalistic split handle and decorated 

in greens with puce highlights on the veins of the leaves.

Comments:

A rare roccoco form of Worcester sauceboat moulded

with scrolling rockwork and with double scroll handle.

The excellent quality of the moulding typifies early Worcester 

sauceboats.  Decorated with polychrome flower sprays.

Comments:

A delightful Vauxhall sauceboat with a 

rococco handle of which a monkey forms 

the upper terminal.  painted in the typical 

"sticky blue" with oriental landscapes.

Printed with the Caughley version of the Fisherman pattern.

Smooth in the upper half with irregular flutes below and on the

foot.

162.    
Body:             Earthenware - Pearlware
Factory:          Unknown
Date:              c1810
Dimensions:    16.8cms
Mark:             None

Comments:

Itself unmarked, this sauceboat is printed in a pattern with fisherman

which is often associated with the Dublin Chinaman James Donovan,

whose impressed mark may be seen on the dish in similar pattern below.

A few re-attributions?

With the exhibition attracting a large number of expert visitors, inevitably some discussion ensued about 

certain of the sauceboats and their attribution.  Here are a few about which the debate was liveliest:

Follow up:  The sauceboat has been claimed for Liverpool with the pattern being an identifying feature.

Another naturalistic sauceboat from Longton Hall, with leaf moulding

and a double twist handle.  Decorated in underglaze blue with a solid 

external border and flower sprays.  The blue versions are rarer than

the coloured, and if of a more blurred variety than this example are likely

to be West Pans, the factory to which Littler went after Longton Hall 

closed.  The crisp painting and the green translucency support the attribution.

Follow up:  A number of people continue to believe this sauceboat should have 

been attributed to West Pans. If West Pans it would be of later date, 1764-8.

See the Simon Spero exhibition catalogue for 1994 and Bernard Watney's English 

Blue and White Porcelain of the 18th Century, plat 38C, for similar.

101.    
Body:            Porcelain - soft paste          
Factory:        Worcester
Date:             1753-5
Dimensions:   15.6cms
Mark:            None

Original Comments:

This low sauceboat is delightfully decorated with leaf scrolls and 

flower sprays.  The handle has a pronounced thumb rest.  Generally 

it is quite similar the the shape used at Lunds (see the example 

above) but appears to have been less popular at Worcester in

the larger sizes made by Lunds.

Follow up:  Almost certainly made at Lunds and decorated at Worcester, so earlier

than the dating above, c 1750.

A very pretty small sauceboat of fluted design with squared 

handle shape.  Decorated with colourful flower spray and inside 

with a daipered border with flower panels.

Follow up: Close inspection after the exhibition suggests this may be of Lunds origin

and therefore of earlier date 1749-50, although probably Worcester decorated.

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