Pot lid inscribed Genuine Bears Grease, £4200 at Kingham & Orme.
This lid is known in the collecting literature as The Two Bears and it has featured in many of the big collections sold by specialist Andrew Hilton of Historical & Collectable in recent years.
The example in the Cashmere collection (1999) sold at £950 and reappeared for sale as part of the Hart collection in 2005 when it took £4000. Another in the Mortimer collection (2011) made £3600. A number of damaged examples have made around the £1000 mark.
All of which made the Evesham piece, in good condition in a period frame, appear extremely good value at its estimate of £200-300. In fact, it outsold the previous examples to bring £4200.
