Bonhams
Lot 245
Polito's Menagerie: an important Staffordshire pearlware model, circa 1825-30The colourful attraction supported by four claw feet, a central flight of steps leading to a six-panelled entrance door flanked by four figures including a drummer, two pipers and a horn player who also operates a barrel organ on which sits a small monkey, the large sign above moulded in relief with an elephant and howdah flanked by exotic animals and birds, impressed 'POLITOS' and 'THE MENAGERIE OF THE WONDERFUL BURDS [sic] AND BEASTS FROM MOST PARTS OF THE WORLD. LION & C', 31.9cm highFootnotes:This important menagerie is one of 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. Table-base groups of 'Wombwell's Menagerie' are very closely related to those of Polito. See examples illustrated and discussed by Pat Halfpenny, English Earthenware Figures (1991), pp.269-274.More elaborate versions of 'Polito's Menagerie' are held in the Victoria & Albert Museum, (inv. no.C.128-2003) and the Fitzwilliam Museum (inv. no.C.965-1928). See also the example sold by Bonhams on 15 December 2020, lot 80. A version similar to the present lot from the Christopher Cone and Stanley Seeger Collection was sold by Sotheby's on 30 October 2018, lot 70.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
