Star billing here had gone to a couple of lots of delftware attributed to early London workshops: two polychrome shoes dated to c.1710-20 guided at £8000-10,000 and a blue and white 'fecundity' dish dated to c.1635 and estimated at £10,000-15,000. Both failed to sell, however, and were bought in well below estimate at £6800 and £6500. This left one of the opening lots of creamware, a 6in (15cm) high teapot painted in polychrome with Aurora in her chariot as the most expensive pottery entry when it sold for £2800, comfortably over the estimate.
With 136 of the 210 lots failing to sell, the take-up for the British material at this sale was rather better than for the smaller 182-lot Continental section in the afternoon where just over half the lots found buyers, although both sessions indicated a softness for bread-and-butter fare. The highest Continental price was £3200, paid twice over for Meissen entries, one an extensive composite part-dinner service of c.1900 decorated with flowersprays, the other an octagonal covered sugar box of c.1730-35, painted with harbour and fishing scenes in the manner of J G Höroldt.
