Page 14 - BBR July 5 2020 Auction

Bears Grease Pot Lids
All from the late Grace Narraway Collection - all as dug - some with ‘specific tip provenance’
40. ROSS & SONS GENUINE BEARS GREASE POT LID & BASE.3ins diam. Multi-coloured highly detailed pictorial, titled ‘Bear Hunting’ (Mortimer 4, p34). Overall really good colours/ strike. Remnants of gold border. Some edge wear & one underside flake & some pin head nicks. (8.5/10) NR £150-200+
Bears grease was listed in the 1786 purchase tax on cosmetics. Its use
by ‘savages’ was remarked upon by
the perfumer Alexander Ross in his ‘Treatise on Bears Grease’ (1795) where he credits “Mr Townsend an Apothecary who resided near a century since in the Haymarket” with introducing prepared bears grease. The earliest bears grease pots are Delftware ointments with a bear pictured and ‘Prepar’d by Townsend
and sold only / by C King Chymist Hay Market’. Ross’s ‘Hair Warehouse’ was at 119 Bishopsgate at that time and he had succeeded Willian Vickery before that. A Vickery delftware pot with a bear pictured has ‘Bishopsgate & Tavistock St’ (see
41. BEAR HUNTING POT LID & BASE. 2.5ins diam. A strong blue transferred generic bears grease lid showing three hunters and dog in the process of attacking the unfortunate bruin! Detailed images on easylive show the damage - the hairline @ 11-o-clock should bleach out OK? (7/10) NR £40-60+
42. HIGHLY PERFUMED BEARS GREASE POT LID & BASE. 2.7ins diam. Two detailed bruins in tree lined landscape. Decorative outer border, single line around central image, lettering between. Thinly potted lid with no chips or cracks, just a touch of staining down the sides. Base has a couple of bottom flakes. (8/7/10) NR A rare bear lid. £220-250+
Images shown on these pages are roughly to scale
ps 37 & 39 Historical Guide to Delftware
and Victorian Ointment Pots, Houghton &
Priestley).
Ross poured scorn on the claims for hair restorers and sold his grease as a conditioner. Most 19th Century sellers promoted it for ‘beautifying and strengthening’ the hair. Many lids reference Russian bear’s grease and a Ballad of 1880 tells us where most were found:
Says Jack, “see (my eyes!) The cause of your surprise; You wonder why your sailor should so hairy be,
But my hair did thus increase
With the using of bear’s-grease Such a quantity we
slaughtered in the Baltic Sea, Then Jack gave her a smack [kiss]
And the girl she cried, “gook Jack!
You’re rougher than a sweeping brush I vow, say~ she”, “Oh!” says Jack, “ t’was rather rougher.
How we made the bears to suffer.
When we were a sweeping off the Baltic Sea.”