A RARE teapot unearthed by a Salisbury auction house has been sold for £460,000.

The small porcelain teapot will be going to its new home in the New York Metropolitan Museum.

It was estimated at £20,000 but went for 23 times that after it went under the hammer yesterday.

The antique was discovered by Woolley and Wallis’s ceramics and glass specialist Clare Durham.

The fascinating find is only the seventh piece to be found of John Bartlam’s porcelain collection, with the other six now residing in the US, spread between private collections and museums.

It was bought in 2016 by a collector for £15 at an auction in Lincolnshire.

Ms Durham said the collector thought the teapot looked interesting but did not know what it was.

The print on one side of the teapot, unrecorded on any piece of English porcelain, is identical to that on two saucers only recently re-attributed to John Bartlam from the Isleworth factory.

This is only the second piece of Bartlam’s wares to come up at auction and the first in the UK - it is also the earliest known American porcelain teapot still in existence.

Bartlam emigrated from the UK in 1763, where he was established as a potter in Staffordshire.

He then set up his business in South Carolina producing slipwares, creamwares and pearlwares.