'The Gate of Calais' punch bowl, c.1750-55 (porcelain)

Very finely and delicately enamelled and gilt on each side, after a print by William Hogarth, with a scene showing the Gate of Calais on which the arms of France impaling those of England are reserved in cartouches; a cook in the foreground staggers under the weight of a joint of beef in his hands, watched by a plump friar and two soldiers, one an Irish mercenary holding a spoonful of soup, and the other a French soldier with a musket; to the left is a group of three fishwives amused by the human-like face of a large fish, with the artist behind them, and to the right lies a Scottish Highlander watching two men carrying a cauldron of soup; each scene is divided by grisaille and iron-red landscape vignettes and small floral cartouches, all reserved on a gilt scrolling foliage ground, the interior with a large floral spray below a border of linked gilt shells at the rim