Decorated with a bold design of stylised fish and waterweeds, it carries a full set of marks to the base plus the signature of Halsey Ricardo (1854-1928), the Arts & Crafts architect and designer who enjoyed a 10-year partnership with De Morgan.
Ricardo advocated the use of glazed materials to resist the pollution of urban Britain – his best-known project being Debenham House in London’s Holland Park which is completely faced with impervious glazed materials, many of them made at the De Morgan factory.
A slightly larger Sands End period ruby lustre jar and cover painted with a range of stylised birds, animals and zoomorphic scrolls sold at Kingham & Orme in March at the lower end of an £8000-12,000 guide.
This one offered in Fife, which came for sale from a local gentleman, was estimated at £1200-1800 at the auction on June 13 and took £9100 from a London-Paris gallery – a house record for the family-run saleroom.
