When the 18th century landowner Robert Surtees of Redworth Hall, County Durham, contemplated the future, he saw dark clouds on the horizon. He had no male heir, so the time would come when the Surtees family name would no longer control his home. To solve this problem, he engineered the marriage of his heiress and only daughter Jane to her first cousin Lieutenant Crosier Surtees, which took place in 1769. To commemorate the happy event – happy for Robert at any case, although perhaps not for Jane, since by all accounts Crosier was thoroughly unpleasant – he commissioned a set of enamelled armorial wine glasses from the celebrated Beilby family workshop in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Four very rare survivors of this unrecorded set, known by the Surtees family as 'The Marriage Glasses', star in Bonhams Fine Glass and British Ceramics Sale in London on Wednesday 23 June. Offered individually, one glass is estimated at £8,000-12,000 with the remaining three glasses estimated at £5,000-8,000 each.

The marriage produced 11 children but little happiness, ending in separation around 1800. Crosier decamped to live with his mistress and met his untimely end falling off a horse into a stream on the moors one evening returning home after dining too well at the Earl of Darlington's banquet some three years later. His frozen corpse was found the following morning, but his passing went unlamented. Robert Surtees, though, had his wish. The Surtees family remained at Redworth Hall until 1952 when it was sold to pay death duties. It is now a hotel.

Bonhams British Ceramics and Glass specialist Jim Peake said: "The glasses are remarkable not only because they can be so precisely dated and attributed, but also because they have remained together in the same family since they were commissioned in the 18th century, when other similar sets were dispersed or lost long ago. They belong to a distinct group of Beilby armorial glasses all similarly painted in this limited palette of colours."

Other highlights include:

• A very rare American glass target ball by E E Sage & Co and an A H Bogardus ball, dated 1877. Target balls were a relatively short-lived forerunner to the modern clay pigeon. They were typically filled with feathers and corked to simulate a bird being hit. The sport became very popular in the United States promoted most notably by Captain A H Bogardus, who patented his first ball and trap on 10 April 1877. Edwin E Sage subsequently patented a 'superior' advertising target ball on 21 August 1877, but a successful trademark infringement case filed by Bogardus combined with failing health caused him to close his business and he had left Chicago by late 1878. As a result, E E Sage & Co target balls are incredibly rare, with only six or so recorded prior to the discovery of the present example. Estimate £1,500-2,000.

• A very rare and unrecorded London Delftware puzzle jug, Pickleherring Quay pottery, Southwark, circa 1650. Delftware puzzle jugs of this early date are incredibly rare and only a few slightly later examples of this shape survive from the last quarter of the 17th century. Estimate: £15,000-20,000.

The sale also offers several private collections, including Part II of the Challenger Collection of Toby Jugs which includes a very rare Fiddler Toby jug from the Midshipman Family of Staffordshire Wares. Estimate: £10,000-15,000. In December last year Bonhams sold another Midshipman Family jug – the Lord Rodney jug – from this collection for a world-record price of £81,500.

Additionally, a private collection of English porcelain which has been until recently exhibited on permanent loan to the Ashmolean Museum, includes an exceptionally rare Bow figure of a Thames Waterman, circa 1755 – the first such figure to come to auction since 2007. Estimate: £20,000-25,000.

7 June 2021