Last sold at Sotheby’s in 2014 for £4000, this Royal Worcester Patience teapot with a provenance to three well-known collections took £10,500 at Denhams in Horsham.
The principal inspiration was Oscar Wilde and the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operetta Patience, first performed in 1881.
Worcester’s design also pokes fun at an exhibition held at the Grosvenor Gallery when a single Chinese teapot was put on display to represent perfection in design and visitors were invited to go home and ‘Live up to it’.
The inscription of the underside of the teapot.
The pink inscription to the base reading Fearful consequences through the law of natural selection and evolution of living up to one’s teapot alludes to this, as well as the controversy that was still raging over Darwin’s theories on evolution.
The identity of Budge whose name also appears on the base has proved elusive but is probably a pseudonym chosen by Worcester’s art director RW Binns. He is thought to have been the teapot’s designer with the model probably made by James Hadley.
Good condition
This example offered on October 19 at Denhams in Horsham, West Sussex, was in particularly good condition with only a small chip to the lily that the lovesick maiden wears on her lapel.
The other side of the Royal Worcester Patience teapot. It sold for £10,500 at Denhams.
It was previously part of Edward Bramah’s Tea and Coffee Museum in Southwark and later in the 105-piece collection of teapots assembled by Colin E Hanley that was sold at Sotheby’s in May 2014.
The side view of the Royal Worcester Patience teapot, a classic satire of the Aesthetic movement, sold for £10,500 at Denhams.
Eight years ago it had made £4000, joining the massive collection of Gilbert and Sullivan memorabilia assembled by Melvyn Tarran (1938-2022) and displayed at Sheffield Park and Garden on the edge of the Sussex Weald near Uckfield. This time, guided at £3000-5000, it sold to a UK private collector for £10,500 (plus 20% buyer’s premium).
