A 17th Century, French Antique, Faience "Boy" Bottle, Circa 1680, Attributed to Nevers, France

A rare and diminutive French faience bottle from the potteries of Nevers, of globular "gourde" form descending ultimately from the pilgrim flasks of Hispano-Moresque and Italian tradition for which the town's manufactories were long renowned. Rising from a spreading foot through a bulbous body to a tall cylindrical neck, the shoulder set with two small applied loop lugs, and painted in cobalt blue and manganese purple with the name "BOY" in bold cursive script, flanked above and below by loosely-rendered floral swags in the characteristic Nevers grand feu palette.

Bottles of this type — a single name framed by floral borders on a lugged gourde body — were for many years catalogued as English delftware, on the strength of their vernacular inscriptions; specialist scholarship has since reattributed the group firmly to Nevers, the French centre credited with introducing manganese purple alongside blue into the national faience palette, and for whom the lugged pilgrim-flask form was a house speciality. The type as generally recorded is of mid-18th century date; the present example, which retains an old collector's label to the underside inscribed "French c.1680 No. 177," shows the heavier potting, more textured glaze and freer brushwork of an earlier phase of production, and appears to represent a genuinely early — and correspondingly scarce — expression of the pattern, very possibly made to English commission or for the export trade, which would account for the inscription.

Provenance: France. Late 17th-century.

Material: Tin-glazed earthenware.

Condition: An old chip to the rim with a sympathetic period fill; fine glaze crazing throughout, consistent with age; scattered pin-holing within the glaze, a firing characteristic rather than a fault; minor wear commensurate with three and a half centuries of handling.

Height: 7.5in (19cm)