MORNING SESSION at 10.30 a.m. (Lots 1-206) BRITISH CERAMICS THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
An English delft blue and white Lawyer's punch bowl

CIRCA 1760, PROBABLY LIVERPOOL

Details
An English delft blue and white Lawyer's punch bowl
Circa 1760, probably Liverpool
The interior with a satirical coat-of-arms, the shield depicted as a parchment scroll inscribed Noverint Universi above a vignette of a lawyer seated at a desk simultaneously receiving payment from two men, the lower two quarters with a book titled Coke upon Littleton and three coins, the lower edge of the parchment suspending five seals on ribbons, with supporters depicted as two men wearing hats, frock-coats and breeches, with scrolls tucked in their belts and one holding a purse full of money, the lefthand supporter standing on a plough and the right on a harrow, surmounted by a crest of a bust of a fox issuing from a mace wearing lawyer's robes and reading a document, flanked by elaborate mantling of sealed scrolls and parchments possibly representing indentures, those to the left inscribed in Latin and those to the right in English, above a ribbon inscribed DUM ViVO THRiVO, beneath a border of stylised half-flowerheads within oval cartouches reserved against a lozenge-pattern border, the exterior with a similar pattern border and birds perched on scrolling branches among flowerheads, with brown-line rim (repaired section, two rim chips, one footrim chip, other minor chipping and slight wear)
11¾in. (30cm.) diam.

Lot Essay

There are currently only two other known similar bowls of this type. A polychrome example inscribed TO THE GLORIOUS, INCERTAINTY, OF THE LAW (sic). was sold in these Rooms 29 January 1979, lot 36 and a blue and white example inscribed THE LAWYER'S COAT OF ARMS is in the Schreiber Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum; see Bernard Rackham Catalogue of the Schreiber Collection, Vol. II, Earthenwares (1930), pl. 3, no. 19 and Michael Archer, Delftware, The Tin-Glazed Earthenware of the British Isles (1997), pp. 302 and 303.

While the meaning of this pseudo-armorial bowl is not totally clear, it is probably simply intended as a satire on the practice of English Law in the mid-18th Century, particularly in relation to matters of property or tenure.

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