Good enough to eat

Chelsea porcelain tureens, c1755

In November 2014, Sotheby’s auctioned o the estate of the late Bunny Mellon, the Listerine heiress who married Paul Mellon, scion of the famous banking family. Bunny and Paul loved to collect antiques and with money no object they amassed valuable Old Master and Impressionist paintings. But that was not all they hunted for – they also enjoyed simple things, such as American pictorial hooked rugs, Scandinavian painted furniture, Sta ordshire figures, English glassware and walking sticks. Bunny herself had a passion for fruit and vegetable-form porcelain, a novelty ceramic genre that was popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Over the years, she built up an astounding collection of bowls and tureens for their home, Oak Spring Farms in Virginia, keeping the cabbage, asparagus and lemon porcelain in dressers. These very rare Chelsea porcelain artichoke tureens, c1755, were estimated at £6,000 to £10,000, and eventually sold for £27,879.