This was a Staffordshire porcelain dessert service, each of the 28 pieces painted with naturalistic sprays of flowers reserved on a deep blue ground, decorated with gilt scrolls and a gadrooned border.
It had been privately consigned from the north of Scotland and went south of the Border to a private English bidder at a double-estimate £5000.
Next up was a large Royal Worcester urn-shaped vase, dated 1893 which, to nobody’s great surprise, went at £2300.
Perhaps of more interest in these days of very buoyant bidding on all sorts of tea caddies was a square-section Bovey Tracey saltglaze example.
Consigned from a Scottish collection, the square section caddy featured three sides decorated in scratch blue with flower sprays and the remaining side with a diaper pattern.
An additional attraction was the inscription Ann Lamacrat Sept ye 4th 1770, on a buff-coloured ground, and although the 5in (12.5cm) high caddy had a crack through the base it took a bid of £1800 from the London trade.
Phillips, Edinburgh, December 18
Buyer’s premium: 15/10 per cent
Scotland’s finest goes to England
UK: LOCAL bidders accounted for most of the Oriental and European ceramics and works of art offered at Edinburgh where 306 lots totalled £75,000 but the top seller went to an English bidder.
