A Chinese Famille Verte Double Mandarin Ducks Ewer

Dimensions: H 9 3/8" W 7 3/4" (24 cm x 20 cm).

This lot comes from the family descendants of Sackville George Pelham, 5th Earl of Yarborough, MC (1888-1948). In the early 20th century, Sackville Pelham was a regular customer of Bluett & Sons Ltd. He had a close personal relationship with the managers, Edgar and Leonard. Many of his collectibles were purchased from Bluett & Sons Ltd. He was passionate about Chinese culture and had a diverse collection of Chinese antiques. He filled a room in his home with various antique artworks and enjoyed sitting alone in the room, quietly admiring them.

Bluett & Sons Ltd., an antique store, was founded by Alfred Ernest Bluett in 1884. After his passing in 1917, his sons, Leonard Buckland Bluett and Edgar Ernest Bluett, took over the management of the antique business. In 1922, they relocated the store from 377 Oxford Street to the bustling intersection of Brooke Street and Davis Street in London. Bluett & Sons was one of the most influential Chinese art antique shops in 20th-century Britain, dealing in porcelain, bronze wares, snuff bottles, and more. During the 1920s, they frequently commissioned Europeans in China to help them source goods, and many artifacts were expedited to London through the Siberian Express. Their clients included King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden, The British Museum in London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and others. They also acquired goods from C.T. Loo, inc. in Paris, London, and Shanghai for resale. With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and the looming war in Europe, the enthusiasm of collectors significantly declined, leading to a sharp decline in Bluett & Sons' turnover between 1938 and 1939. It only recovered after World War II. Starting in the early 1970s, they began publishing scholarly catalogs, which were later emulated by various antique shops and auction houses. During the active era of antique shops, there were also opportunistic traders similar to those seen in the 1990s Chinese auction market. One such customer, Major Lindsay F Hay, bought many Chinese imperial porcelain items from Bluett & Sons in 1938 and auctioned them at Sotheby's the following year.

Sackville George Pelham, 5th Earl of Yarborough, MC (17 December 1888 - 7 February 1948), styled Lord Worsley from 1914 to 1926 and known as The Lord Conyers from 1926 until his accession to the earldom in 1936, was a British peer and soldier.

Pelham was the second son of Charles Pelham, 4th Earl of Yarborough and his wife, Marcia. In 1910, he became a Second Lieutenant in the 11th Hussars and initially fought as a lieutenant in France during World War I before being promoted to the rank of captain in 1916. During the war, his elder brother, Charles was killed in action and Sackville assumed the former's courtesy title of Lord Worsley. After the war, he was awarded the Military Cross and retired from the Army in 1919 when he married Nancye Brocklehurst (a niece of Lord Ranksborough). The couple had two daughters, Diana Mary who became Diana Miller, 11th Countess of Mertola (1920-2013) and (June) Wendy who became Mrs Michael Hildesley Lycett (1924-2012).

In 1926, Lord Worsley became a major in the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry and on the death of his mother that year, inherited the baronies of Conyers and Fauconberg and the Portuguese countship of Mertola. He later inherited the earldom of Yarborough from his father in 1936.

From 1936 to 1940 the earl commanded the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry as a Lieutenant Colonel and fought in World War II from 1939 to 1944. Together with his wife, he was a survivor of the aerial bomber bombardment of the RMS Empress of Britain in October 1940 (and later sinking under tow) in which 45 were killed off Ireland. On his death in 1948, the earldom, Brocklesby Park and a moderately large area of farmland passed to his brother, Marcus, whilst the countship passed to his eldest daughter, Lady Diana, and the baronies went into abeyance between his two daughters. The death of his youngest daughter in 2012 terminated that in favour of Diana, who thus succeeded him in the baronies.