Creating lots of excitement at this Trembath Welch Essex sale on 14 July was a Newhall mug decorated in sepia with a scene of three boys seated at a table before a farmhouse within a gilt and foliate swagged border. To the underside was an old label reading Newhall mug c.1790 by Fidelle Duvivier. Some damage – a crack and a chip to the rim – had encouraged the auctioneers to aim low at £300-500 but subsequent information revealed a very similar mug with polychrome decoration, but the same swag borders had sold at Sotheby’s Olympia two or three years ago for £11,000. With plenty of competition from the London trade, Trembath Welch achieved £9500 for their vendor.
The same source, an established local family collection now being downsized, yielded a Derby ‘vase’ – it was actually a 3in (8cm) sucrier base with scalloped lug handles sans lid – decorated with two rectangular reserves titled to the underside A Frigate Before the Winds Brisk Gale and A View in Cornwall. George Robertson is the best-known painter of marines for Derby in c.1796, when this was painted, and that magic name saw bidding climb to £1550.
The presence of a Flight Barr and Barr can decorated with a floral spray saw a lot of four early 19th century cans from the same collection rise to £1250, while from different sources a c.1700 London delft shallow bowl decorated with yellow and blue stylised tulips, 14in (35cm) diameter, sold to the Hertfordshire trade at £1700 and a Susie Cooper dinner service for 12 in the Leaping Deer pattern including six graduated platters, two small and two large tureens made £1250 (estimate £300-500).
Outside of the ceramics the two major highlights were a nicely-preserved 8in (20cm) high cold-painted bronze after N. Greb of a Turkish lady with two lions marked for the Bergman foundry sold for £1900 (estimate £600-800), and a Regency mahogany extending dining table with three extra leaves and turned and reeded legs sold at £2200 to a London dealer. The latter was in rough condition but restoration would be rewarded with a fine quality table extending to 9ft 9in (2.96m).
Trembath Welch, Great Dunmow, July 14
Buyer’s premium: 10 per cent
High Fidelle-ity ups the price
Between 1781-90, when Fidelle Duvivier was at New Hall he created some of the factory’s finest wares, painting in a highly characteristic style figure and landscape compositions. However, as Geoffrey Godden wrote in his Guide to English Porcelain: “His pieces are so rare that I wonder what on earth he did with himself when he was employed at the factory!”
