A Staffordshire salt-glazed stoneware Guglet or Water Bottle, circa 1760
Made of white salt-glazed stoneware, this handsome Staffordshire guglet or water bottle is enamelled with three writhing scaly Chinese dragons and scattered floral sprays, the neck with a band of fruits and flowers. This overdecoration (clobbering) was added circa 1800-20, in order to enhance what would have been seen as a rather plain and old-fashioned item. The Regency elite favoured this style of rich decoration during the early part of the 19th century as the Prince Regent – later King George IV – was cultivating a vogue for the exotic orient with flamboyant projects such as the Royal Pavilion at Brighton.
This type of Regency enamel decoration is sometimes added to Chinese blue and white porcelain of the Kangxi and Qianlong period, however it is scarcely ever found on Staffordshire salt-glazed stoneware. A Staffordshire salt-glazed guglet decorated in the early 19th-century with a kylin and two phoenixes recently came to light at auction in the United States: Brunk Auctions, North Carolina, 26 February 2026, American & Southern, lot 1191 (Provenance: Wynn A. Sayman, Richmond, Massachusetts; Dr Richard and Carol Lamb, Kenneth Square, Pennsylvania).
Condition: The decoration is in good order with just some wear to the gilt line below the rim and above the border at the base. Breaks to the neck and rim have been professionally repaired. No other damage. From manufacture, there are minor firing and potting flaws, one of which the artist has disguised with a flower.
Dimensions: Height 24.5 cm
Early Staffordshire Pottery, Bernard Rackham (Faber & Faber, 1951).
European Decoration on Oriental Porcelain 1700-1830, Helen Espir (Jorge Welsh Books, 2005).
The Watney Collection of Chinese Porcelain Decorated in Holland and England (Bonhams sale catalogue, 7 November 2003).
The Atrocious Unsworth – Chinese blue and white porcelain clobbered in London in the 19th century (Helen Espir, English Ceramic Circle Transactions, Volume 29, 2018).