Fergus Gambon
Director
Lot 80*
A rare Staffordshire Table-base group of 'Polito's Menagerie', circa 1830-35
15 December 2020, 14:30 GMT
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £22,750 inc. premium
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Anna Burnside
Head of Sale
A rare Staffordshire Table-base group of 'Polito's Menagerie', circa 1830-35
The handsome six-panelled door amply lit by three lanterns, surmounted by a brightly coloured banner unfolded to reveal an elephant with a castellated howdah, perhaps representing Chunee, surrounded by exotic animals including a lion an a tiger, inscribed 'POLITOS ROYAL MENAGERIE OF THE WONDERFULL BURDS AND BEASTS FROM MOST PARTS OF THE WORLD: LION & C.', a group of various figures and musicians set before the entrance including a man playing a barrel organ, a drummer and three bugle players, the doorkeeper with her hands in a muff, a flight of steps leading down from the six-footed rectangular table base, 33.5cm high
Footnotes
Provenance
Exhibited by Jonathan Horne, English Pottery and Related Works of Art 2004, no.32
James and Timmey Challenger Collection, Chicago
This important menagerie is the most elaborate and arguably most celebrated of the early 19th century Staffordshire figure groups. It represents a culmination in the quality and development of Staffordshire pottery before focus moved towards the production of simpler and more rudimentary flatback figures.
Menageries were popular in England from the late 18th century and enabled exotic animals to be seen by the public for the first time. By the 1830s these shows began to evolve into what we now know as a circus, with the addition of animal tamers' tricks, brass bands and performers. Stephen Polito owned one of the earliest and most celebrated travelling menageries, described in the 28 September 1805 edition of the Nottingham Journal as a '...grand and pleasing assemblage of most rare and beautiful living beasts, from the remotest parts of the known world...'.
In 1810 he bought the permanent menagerie located on the second floor of the Exeter Exchange in the Strand, London, originally established by the self-styled 'Modern Noah' Gilbert Pidcock, which Polito restyled the 'Royal Menagerie'. Polito died in April 1814 but his family continued to tour and exhibit animals under his name throughout the 1820s and 1830s, mostly abroad. In 1835 or 1836 it was lost at sea on its way to Ireland, see Edward Henry Bostock, Menageries, Circuses and Theatres (1928), pp.7-9.
The banner may show the elephant Chunee, Pidcock's star attraction, which was admired by Lord Byron but which killed his keeper and was destroyed in 1826. It has been suggested that the female figure at the door may represent Mrs Polito. Table-base groups are traditionally associated with the Burslem potter Obadiah Sherratt, but in the absence of any marked examples caution is needed in ascribing these pieces to a named maker; indeed, a number of different versions of 'Polito's Menagerie' exist, suggesting that these menageries were made by more than one potter, or the moulds shared between potteries or acquired from the same source.
Similar versions to the present lot are in the Victoria and Albert Museum (accession no. C.128-2003) and the Fitzwilliam Museum (accession no. C.965-1928). Another from the Hope McCormick Collection was sold by Christie's in New York on 21 January 2003, lot 17. See also that sold by Sotheby's in New York on 26 October 2002, lot 1531. Smaller and less elaborate versions were also produced, examples of which have been sold by Sotheby's in New York on 26 September 1998, lot 233 and 6 October 2006, lot 227 and by Sotheby's in London on 30 October 2018, lot 70.
