In 1962 Hugh Tait, Keeper at the British Museum, published his paper on Handel and Bow in which he identified five pieces of Bow porcelain commemorating George Frederick Handel who died on 14 April 1759.[i] These were four watch holders and a vase in the British Museum. Ours, the sixth, is another vase and the only one with a cover.

Our vase is painted with the score of a minuet and the initials ‘TF’ for Thomas Frye, and ‘GH’ for George Handel. Thomas Frye, the founder of the factory retired in 1759 to devote his remaining years to painting and printmaking.

The British Museum vase differs from ours in having three figures of children representing Music, Drama and Dancing, it also has Thos Frye’s initials ‘TF’. Other variants of the form are known, but without the connection to Handel

The most fully inscribed watch holder is that which belonged to The Antique Porcelain Company which bears the text: ‘To great handle the god of musick 1759’ along with a number of sheets of paper bearing the initials ‘G.F.H.’ and ‘G. H.’. The watch holder in the Freeman Collection is inscribed ‘Handle’and bears the date ‘Fr Nov. 5. 1759’. This is decorated with the same carefully drawn score of ‘Lady Coventry’s Minuet’ as appears on our vase. It is an anonymous work and there is no reason to think that it was composed by Handel.  Tait analyses the other sheets of music that appear on the known examples and concludes that the scores are a random selection of popular works, and none are actually by Handel himself.[iii]

Tait comments that: ‘These five pieces commemorating Handel can, therefore, be regarded as among the last porcelain to be produced by direct order of the creative genius of the Bow factory, Thomas Frye, and in the quality of porcelain, potting and enamelling they represent the high level of achievement  of the Bow factory  at the end of the fifties- a worthy tribute not only to Thomas Frye but also ‘to the great handle the god of musick’.’[iv]

The recorded examples of watch holders:

Antique Porcelain Company

Cecil Higgins Museum Bedford

Geoffrey Freeman Collection, Holburne Museum, Bath. Inscribed:

‘A Cantata’, ‘Hay-makers’, ‘…Handle’ ‘…by Lorv’ ‘Sonata IV’ ‘A, Minuet’ ‘A Song’ ‘Fr Nov 5. 1759’[v]

D.M. and P. Mannheim lent by them to the Detroit Institute of Arts exhibition of English Pottery and Porcelain in 1954 

Condition:

Twice broken through the foot of the vase along the luting joints, associated losses to flowers. Child supporters reattached, left arm of one replaced.

Cover broken and restuck, loss to internal flange.

Losses to extremities.

Provenance:

Anton Gabszewicz Collection

Literature:

Gabszewicz & Pearce 2021
Gabszewicz & Pearce, ECC Transactions 32, (2021–22),  p. 36, fig. 65 with related sherds from the Bow site

References:

Adams & Redstone 1981
Elizabeth Adams, & David Redstone, Bow Porcelain, (London, Faber, 1981)

Antique Porcelain Company 1951
Antique Porcelain Co., ‘Exhibition of English and Continental Porcelain of the 18th Century’, Catalogue: (June 1951)

Gabszewicz 1982
Anton Gabszewicz & Geoffrey Freeman, Bow Porcelain, The collection formed by Geoffrey Freeman, (1982)

Stevenson 1993
Tony Stevenson, ‘James Welsh A Bow porcelain painter revealed’, Apollo, January 1993, pp. 12–17

Tait 1959
Hugh Tait, ‘Bow Porcelain, 1744-1776, A Special Exhibition of Documentary Material to commemorate the bi-centenary of the retirement of Thomas Frye’, Catalogue, (The British Museum, 1959)

Tait 1962
Hugh Tait, ‘Handel and Bow’, Apollo July 1962 pp. 384-90

Yarborough 1996
Raymond C Yarbrough, Bow porcelain and the London theatre: Vivitur Ingenio, (Hancock, MI: Front and Center Publications, 1996)

Price: £25,000

[i] Tait 1962.

[ii] Tait 1959. No. 104.

[iii] Yarborough 1996, further investigates the different scores that appear on the known examples.

[iv] Tait 1962, p. 390.

[v] Gabszewicz 1982, p. 95, no. 139.