Bears Grease Manufacturer pot lid, £16,250 at Historical & Collectable.
The best-preserved example of the celebrated pot lid Bears Grease Manufacturer sold to an English collector for £16,250 (plus 20% buyer’s premium) at Berkshire specialist auction house Historical & Collectable.
The politically incorrect lid that depicts a butcher flaying a carcass was clearly made in only small numbers: only half a dozen are known in two different sizes.
This example was of the larger size, 4in (10.5cm) diameter, with a coloured marbled border inscribed in black Clayton & Cos Real Bears Grease 58 Watling St. London.
Best example
In good condition apart from four small chips to the flange of the base, it is considered the best example extant. It is the one illustrated in Harold Clarke’s 1931 reference work The Pot Lid Book. All the others that are recorded are in some way inferior, restored or defective.
Andrew Hilton of Historical & Collectable, formerly of Special Auction Services, has sold all the other examples of Bears Grease Manufacturer in recent years. “I was recently asked to sell the lid by a collector who didn’t want to wait until the next scheduled auction in November. I considered the alternatives”, he said
“For a lid of this stature there is but a handful of collectors worldwide so the best approach would be a sale by ‘sealed bids’. Each participant would get one go at proposing the hammer price they were prepared to pay with bids submitted by noon on August 1.
“After approaching a number of established collectors from different parts of the globe, various very keenly competing bids were submitted. In the event the highest bid was from an English collector.”
Another large version of the lid with lettering, suffering only a small rim chip, was sold in 1996 as part of the Ball Collection for £3800 and subsequently re-sold in the sale of the Hart Collection in 2005 for £6600. In 2009 a broken and restored lid dug from a Victorian tip in the West Midlands sold for £5800.
