An Extremely Rare and Very Early Dr Wall Worcester Sauceboat, of the silver taste and moulded in crisp low relief with oval panels the borders of which are beaded and have internal Vitruvian scrollwork and acanthus ornament, either side further moulded leaf and flower ornament and two double ‘C’ scrolls beside the scrolled handle with spaniel thumb piece and kicked and scrolled lower terminal. A further oval panel beneath the spout exhibits a finely chased scrolled border. Painted in the famille rose palette, a Chinese lady in puce robes with top knot stands beckoning beside a green ginger jar filled with sticks with a gnarled fir tree to one side and a red fence and flower to the other, the other side with a similarly gnarled willow tree beside a puce compressed oval bowl and cover a blue vase filled with flowers a trumpet shaped beaker and a yellow breasted bird holding onto a single flower and stem. The interior with five trailing floral sprays and a single butterfly with multicoloured wings to the spout.

Further Details: The shape of the bird and the rhythmic trails of blue populated floral sprays should be compared to enamelling on the very first vase forms to emanate from the manufactory the lobed baluster examples in the A.J. Smith collection at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. The early blue colour proved extremely difficult to fire and often has burned out in the kiln with the result that the blue can sometimes completely disappear or have a very sticky granular texture. The quality of the blue on this example is quite superb and the colour is present in every detail. The shape would have been completely finished in its finely moulded state and indeed has a greyish blue to the glaze which in our opinion furthers the trompe l’oeil effect of the silver form and taste and therefore would appear to be silver on the candlelit table. Thus, the new and novel material of porcelain is successfully transposed into the silver shape and form. The prominent figural decoration which is a part of the characteristic success of the famille rose patterns at Worcester is much less prominent in other English manufactories. The mixture which is unique to Worcester in this palette and style should be compared to a mixture of enamelling found on Stourbridge Opaque white glass, enamelled salt glazed stoneware from Staffordshire and Meissen Indianisch blumen together with figural decoration that is closest to Johann Ehrenfried Stadler. Each element of this design on each of the panels appears to have been composed with the utmost ingenuity and deliberation. Certainly the enamelling team must have been still very small at this stage for on some of the surviving pieces of this earliest period the same hand can be discerned. The secondary decoration on this piece is particularly vivid and carefully employed, with quite the space for a practiced hand to show their tremendous ability.