Chelsea Coloured Goat and Bee Jug, Circa 1745

A Very Rare Chelsea Coloured ‘Goat and Bee’ Jug, the slender pear-shaped body moulded in the shape of recumbent horned goats amongst vegetation with the handle formed as a simulated oak branch with applied oak leaves. An applied winged bee climbs along the side of the spout pollinating coloured flowers in hues of pink, yellow, and blue. A painted butterfly and ladybirds hover nearby.

See an example in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2875-1901)
See another example in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1983.645), in the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham (AFI.248.1998), in the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle (69.162) and in the Legion of Honor, San Francisco (1990.51.4).

Chelsea ‘goat-and-bee’ jugs are the earliest dated English porcelain with a documentary example in the British Museum marked with incised date of 1745 (1905,0218.6). Coloured examples are rare and this model would have been slip cast where flute lines can be seen to the right of each lower section. The form may have derived from the silver Ashburnham centrepiece made by Nicholas Sprimont from which Paul Crane discusses the origins of the form, tracing it back to a drawing by Francois Boucher engraved by Hurquier ca. 1740, see Paul Crane ‘A Question of Attribution’, The Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle Vol 27 (2017).

Mark:  Incised Triangle Mark