An 18th century Vauxhall delft charger was one of the 140 pieces of delftware from the collection of Dr James Black, a lecturer and published authority on the subject, which were sold at Oxfordshire auction house Jones & Jacob (18% buyer’s premium) on November 24.
The documented and exhibited 13½in (34cm) diameter plate with iron red floral decoration was estimated at £300-500 and sold to a collector in the Watlington rooms at £1250.
Offered without reserves, everything from the collection sold to a hammer total of £22,000.
Also going to collectors were a late 18th century, 9in (23cm) diameter Lambeth plate and a 6¾in (17cm) Bristol plate.
The Lambeth example, naively decorated with Italian balloonist Vincent Lunardi’s 1784 flight at Hatfield, quadrupled top estimate at £1050. The Bristol plate decorated with Long Liza – a variation of the Dutch Lange Lizjen plates, themselves based on Chinese designs – was inscribed AV 1748 and took £680 against a £80-120 estimate.
Worcester mix
Two early Worcester plates with famille verte type decoration were offered at Tennants’ (20% buyer’s premium) of Leyburn on November 17. Each was painted with almost identical designs of a bird perched in a flowering prunus tree flanked by bamboo. The date c.1752 put them among the factory’s first productions of this shape.
The first up was slightly misshapen and failed to sell against a £5000- 7000 estimate but the second, with only a small chip, sold to the UK trade at £5200.
Ox in Guernsey
Best of a private collection of 18th and 19th century English ceramics consigned by a local vendor to Guernsey auction house Martel Maides (22% buyer’s premium) was a 22in (56cm) long blue and white platter from the celebrated Durham Ox series.
John Whessel’s famous engraving of the beast and its owner John Day (after an 1802 painting by John Boultbee) was reproduced by more than one Staffordshire factory.
It remains among the most highly sought-after designs by collectors, although prices have dropped over the past two decades.
With minor condition concerns including some small glaze flakes and a small chip, the platter was estimated at £500-700 but sold to a Guernsey collector at £1500.
