Pair of Bloor Derby Urns, Painted with Flowers on a Pale Blue Ground

Each two handled urn is painted with a romantic view, one a castle, the other a country cottage, within a shaped gilt and yellow border. on a molded and cobalt-blue ground. The back is gilt with a stylized design, the base is molded with acanthus. Each is numbered in red 155 underneath. These perhaps adorned an early 19th century mantelpiece...

Now fitted as lamps, these two handled Paris urns are painted with floral bouquets on one side and a courtship scene on the other. The gilding is rubbed but the painting is well exec...

These are large, French and of excellent quality. From acorn finials to square stepped bases, this pair exude quality unmistakably. They have the de luxe look of items from the Belle...

This pair are charmingly painted in oval reserves with mother and child within a gilt jeweled border, and verso with wild flowers. Each domed cover is painted correspondingly with a ...

This is a very charming pair of porcelain figures of a stag and a doe, probably cast by Derby in about 1760 and decorated by Bloor Derby in 1820. The figures are a simple white porce...

A very unusual and quite large pair of Empire period Sèvres Porcelain pale Celeste blue and faux porphyry ground vases. Each vase is intricately hand painted with meticulous detail and further adorned with 24-karat hand painted gilt decoration. The bases are a very unusual hand painted faux porphyry porcelain. Each vase and base is marked with various pressnumera and Sèvres signs...

A fine Bloor Derby Porcelain porter mug c.1820-1825, finely decorated in the manner of Thomas Steel with a rectangular panel of flowers in a basket on a stone ledge, with a lime gree...

This is a spectacular and very rare set of ten dessert plates made by Derby in about 1825, which was the Regency era. The plates are richly gilded, each with an individual gilt pattern, and have superb fruit paintings, also each unique, by the famous porcelain decorator Thomas Steel. One can occasionally find one of these plates in the market, but to find a whole set of 10 in such fabulous condition is extremely rare. The Derby factory, later reshaped into Royal Crown Derby, is currently the oldest British porcelain factory still in production. Derby was one of the most prominent potteries right from the start of English porcelain production in the mid 1700s to today. Their items are of exceptionally high quality and many of the designs have become iconic, particularly the Imari designs; many of these are still being made today. Derby made many exciting designs in the Regency era, and these plates are beautiful examples. The marking at the bottom indicates that the plates were produced some time between 1806 and 1825, when the company was called "Bloor Derby"; however the style is from between 1820 and 1825. Thomas Steel (sometimes written as Steele) is considered the very best 19th Century porcelain painter of fruits. He was born in Staffordshire in 1772 and was first apprenticed by Wedgwood. He moved to Derby in 1815, where he became the foremost flower and fruit painter. In 1825 he moved on to the Rockingham factory in Yorkshire, and a few years later to Minton in Staffordshire, where he worked the rest of his life. Steel had a very recognisable style of fruit painting, perhaps best described by the biographer John Haslem: "Steele painted both flowers and insects well, but as a painter of fruit on china he had no superior, if, indeed, he had any equal in his day... His grouping is harmonious, the light and shade well managed, each piece of fruit is well rounded, and the outline softened and blended into the one next to it, each partaking of the reflected colour from the other." These plates each have a different richly gilded border, and octagonal paintings...