In 1995 one painted with thistles sold for £8600; in 2000 one painted with typical cabbage roses sold for £9600 followed by another decorated with thistles that sold the following year for £10,500. Prices then took a substantial leap forward last year when an example painted with shamrock sold for £16,000, a record for any Wemyss pig.
However, if anyone believed that prices must have reached some sort of zenith they were wrong.
This slumbering porker, decorated with two apples on a leafy branch, marked with a yellow script mark and applied with a paper label detailing its part in the Rogers de Rin Wemyss Ware exhibition at Thomas Goode and Co in 1987, was one of two of the coveted model offered at this year's Gleneagles sale on August 31. It had some minor restoration but was the subject of fierce competition between two bidders, selling at £29,000 (plus 20 per cent buyer's premium). The remarkable price was matched again later in the sale by another sleeping piglet of the same model painted with cabbage roses and a green script mark, which, despite a faint hair crack to right ear, also trebled its £8000-10,000 estimate.
