This finely potted saucer shows a primitive style of painting in underglaze blue dating from the earliest years of the Worcester factory, and is a style inherited from its Lund’s Bristol predecessor. Referred to as the Swimming Ducks pattern by Bernard Watney, in this version the two ducks are swimming to the right, but others are known with the ducks swimming left. A biscuit fragment of a teabowl in the design was found in the factory site excavations. Both Limehouse and Lund’s Bristol are known to have made variants of the pattern prior to Worcester.
Diameter: 13cm
No mark
Condition: broken in five pieces and professionally repaired, with two footrim chips at the junction of the repair.
See Bonhams, Fine British Pottery and Porcelain, 13 Nov. 2013, for a teabowl and saucer in the pattern.
Also Branyan, French & Sandon, Worcester Blue & White Porcelain 1751-1790, IC.1, p.144 for a mug, and Steven Goss, British Blue and White Porcelain Saucers 1745-1795, p.44, pl.65 for another saucer, this time with the ducks swimming to the left.