A Flight, Barr & Barr crested part dinner service 1820-30

painted en grisaille with a variation of the Yates crest of a goat's head within a garter inscribed with the motto PRO REGE ET PATRIA, against a pink ground and gilt gadroon- moulded rim, comprising:
a circular soup tureen and cover,
three sauce tureens, covers and four stands,
three oval vegetable dishes and covers,
a square dish,
eleven soup plates,
thirty-two dinner plates,
nine small plates,
five graduated oval serving dishes

On 25th February 1964, when a Mrs. Peel Yeats sold eighty-three pieces of this service in these Rooms, lot 171, the crest was identified as that of the Peel family. When another sixty-seven pieces were sold in Sotheby's New York on 16th October 1987, further research on the crest revealed it was possibly the result of an amalgamation of the Peel and Yates families, and in descent it had become the victim of misinformation. The goat's head crest and motto Pro Rege et Patria (in a slightly different form to the present lot) can be traced to the Yates family of Holm Cot, Devon. It is noted by H.Sandon in Flight and Barr Worcester Porcelain 1783-1840, that circa 1813-15 the Flight, Barr & Barr factory produced an armorial service for a Sir Robert Peel who had recently married a member of a branch of the Yates family whose motto was Industria. Sandon also notes that a James Yates was working as the London sales manager of the Chamberlain's factory (ibid, p.209). In 1839 he arranged to purchase the lease and stock of the Flight , Barr & Barr premises at 155 New Bond Street, London. It is said that he could have arranged to order such a crested service at the time. This may be another possibility as to the history of the service, although it seems the least likely.