Bottle
Category
Ceramics
Date
1600 (circa) - 1650 (circa)
Materials
Ceramic and silver gilt
Order this imageCollection
Charlecote Park, Warwickshire
NT 532432
Summary
Pair of ewers, porcelain, the bodies shaped like elongated pomegranates, the spouts like branches with applied leaves, made in Jingdezhen, China, c. 1600–25. They are decorated with prunus branches, birds and insects in white engobe (liquid clay) on a brown iron oxide ground, with European silver-gilt mounts, c. 1650. The neck has a stepped collar with a tooled overlapping leaf band on the lower rim, a domed cover with baluster finial and a chain from the collar to a stopper on the spout, which has a cut leaf edge (i). (i) Patricia F. Ferguson, Ceramics : 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces, (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016), p.24.
Full description
These ewers formed part of the collection of William Thomas Beckford (1760-1844). Beckford curated a substantial collection with wealth derived from his position as an absentee enslaver and plantation landlord. He was the fourth generation of enslavers and had inherited 15 Jamaican plantations in 1770 (i). Due to mismanagement, lawsuits and the decline in sugar profits, Beckford was forced to sell his collection and his home Fonthill Abbey (ii). The entirety of the collection and estate was intended to be sold at auction in 1822, although this was cancelled as a private buyer was found (iii). The new buyer sold the collection by auction in 1823 attended by George Hammond Lucy (1789-1845). Lucy bought the pair of ewers, lot 1269, for £6.6s. In 1850, the stoppers were stolen during a burglary at Charlecote. Later found in the pocket of the assailant, they were subsequently returned. Mary Elizabeth Lucy (1803-90) recorded the bottles in her sitting room in 1862 (iv). A Chinese porcelain jar decorated in a similar manner with engobe on brown iron oxide, which was made into a teapot after being brought to Europe, is in the collection at Anglesey Abbey (NT 513426, formerly at Burghley House, Lincolnshire). (i) ‘William Thomas Beckford’, Legacies of British Slave-Ownership database, UCL, accessed 30/05/2024. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/22232 (ii) See Boyd Alexander, (trans. and ed.), Life at Fonthill 1807-1822 With Interludes in Paris and London. From the Correspondence of William Beckford, (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1957); England’s Wealthiest Son: A Study of William Beckford, (London: Centaur Press Lt., 1962); Amy Frost, ‘The Beckford Era’ in Caroline Dakers (ed.), Fonthill Recovered: A Cultural History, (London: UCL Press, 2018), pp. 59-93 (iii) Caroline Dakers ‘The break-up of the Fonthill estate’ in Caroline Dakers (ed.), Fonthill Recovered: A Cultural History, (London: UCL Press, 2018), pp. 97-98 (iv) Mary Elizabeth Lucy, Biography of the Lucy Family at Charlecote Park in the County of Warwickshire, (London: privately printed by Emily Faithful & Co, 1862), p.131
Provenance
Acquired 1823 from the Fonthill Sale, Lot No. 1269, page 131 'The Lucys of Charlecote' by Mary Elizabeth Lucy (1803-1890), dated 28th Nov 1861.