Staffordshire Pottery Auction at Devon Auctioneers: No Trouble with the Vauxhall Flower Beds

Published 8th August 2012

The Staffordshire Potters were it seems keen business men and were quite happy to pass off the same group in different guises and often one can see the same figure with different captions.

 staffordshire-pottery-isaac-van-amburgh-or-hercules

A Staffordshire Pottery figure as Hercules in his first labour
to bring back the skin of the Numean Lion

 staffordshire-pottery-lorenzo-the-lion-tamer-or-androcles-and-the-lion

... and now perhaps as Samson wrestling a lion!

For instance, is this Hercules on his first labour to bring back the skin of the Numean Lion, or Samson wrestling a lion or might it just be Isaac van Amburgh the Brute Tamer of Pompeii?

I cannot be alone in preferring the latter more colourful character. There is an engraving in the London Illustrated News of September 1848 of van Amburgh wrestling lions at the Vauxhall Gardens - well London was obviously very different back then and I bet there were no tabbies digging up the municipal beds in that park.

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