Each carrying a politically-charged slogan and dated from c.1780, these had paper labels suggesting they had been bought from D M & P Manheim, New York.
Despite its relatively poor condition, an oval patch box titled in black script Great Washington to Thee We owe our Liberty sold at £2000 while a tiny 2cm circular pill box titled to the lid Freedom and Independency sold at £1600. Topping the trio at £3200 (estimate £2000- 3000) at the auction on February 20 was a well-preserved patch box with a lid titled God Bless the United States.
All were bought by a UK trader, believed to be on behalf of a client in the US.
Also pictured here are two highlights from the early English pottery section. The 12in (31cm) pearlware bust of John Wesley c.1820 was part of a large collection Wesley and Methodist-related ceramics formed by the Reverend John J Perry (1893-1964) across 25 years from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s.
The basic model is relatively common but this example has a square footed base of the type typically associated with the Obadiah Sherratt pot bank. Estimated at £100-200, it took £2000 from a UK dealer.
The appeal of a Bristol delftware plate c.1720 is its decoration of a smouldering bottle kiln in a landscape. Michael Archer’s Delftware in the Fitzwilliam Museum pictures a similar 9in (22cm) plate and recently a pair was sold by Denhams in Horsham in November for £620.
This example carried an old paper label describing the plate’s purchase from the collection of HC Maddicks of Bristol in 1936. It did particularly well, selling to a UK private collector at £2800 (estimate £400-600).
