Tag Archives: Pottery

August 7, 2011

Royal Roses

By daseger

I am a very casual collector of early and mid-nineteenth-century pottery, and have gone through different phases of interest and intensity of interest over the years: simple white ironstone, creamware, red (pink) transferware, children’s plates. I still have some of the latter, but have sold or given away everything else. Along the way, the one type of pottery that I have not tired of are painted pearlware pieces in the “King’s Rose” or “Queen’s Rose” pattern, made in England in the first half of the nineteenth century for the American market. Another variation, red and green without the lustre band, is called “Adams Rose” after the manufacturer, and sometimes these patterns are referred to as “Gaudy Dutch” or “Gaudy Welsh” as well. I like these pieces (mostly plates) because they are painted, as opposed to transfer-printed; this makes them somewhat less common, but much more difficult to preserve. I rarely come across one with perfect paint and when I do its price is more than I am willing to pay. In their day, however, I think that they were basic dinnerware: when I was digging out an herb garden behind my kitchen ell a decade ago I uncovered shards of the same patterned plates I had in my china cabinet!

So here are some of my pieces, which are generally tucked away on shelves and in corners; these plates are yet another floral motif that my husband only tolerates.

And here are some pieces that I do not possess but would like to: two coffee pots, one in the King’s Rose pattern (which sold at Christies several years ago) and another in the more delicate Queen’s Rose pattern, along with a very exuberant teabowl and saucer from Patrician Antiques.

2 Comments | tags: Antiques, Home, Interiors, Pottery | posted in History

January 27, 2011

A Succession of Souvenir Plates

By daseger

Apparently our British cousins across the Atlantic are not entirely pleased with the official royal wedding china issued in advance of the upcoming nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton, provoking the production of unofficial alternatives like the plate below, one of several offered by London-based KK Outlet:

This got me thinking about souvenir or commemorative china in general, and plates in particular. Actually I was inspired by an earlier post on Frank Cousins and his wares to look closer at Salem souvenir plates, but it seems sensible to take a longer (and broader) view. As they are with so many advertising innovations, I assumed that the Victorians were the pioneering producers of commemorative china, but if we examine the genre in terms of its most basic purpose—remembrance—we can go back further, to at least the Renaissance. Italian Renaissance maiolica potters regularly produced domestic pottery to commemorate family events, generally betrothals and births, as these two examples (Urbino, 1530 & 1540) from the huge majolica collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum illustrate:

Moving forward several centuries we have two amazing examples (also from the V & A) of European commemorative china commissioned from China, reminders that Europeans had their “China Trade” well before Salem merchants established their Asian trading connections. Both plates are from the mid-eighteenth century; the first commemorates the arrival of a Dutch East India Company ship in Chinese waters, the second marks the Jacobite Uprising in Scotland in 1745 (Strange Kilts! Actually the wearing of all tartan kilts was banned by the British government—until 1782—in retaliation for this rebellion).

As we move into the nineteenth century, souvenir china is transformed from bespoke to retail trade because of changing conditions in both supply and demand, converging in the foundation of a “mass market”. Still mining the vast collection of the Victoria & Albert, I’ve come up with several Victorian and Edwardian souvenir plates, capturing such iconic British images as the great Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Year, and the Bard.

This last Shakespeare plate dates from 1904, and is similar in color, style, period and origin to the Salem souvenir plates below, which represent a very small sample of English plates produced for the American market prior to World War One. The Boston firm Jones, McDuffee & Stratton had a virtual monopoly on importing the popular Wedgwood blue-and-white transferware decorated with “historic” American scenes (listing 78 designs in their 1910 catalogue and as many as 300 patterns overall), and so their Salem competitor Daniel Low & Company turned to smaller Staffordshire potteries for the production of their designs. With the earlier success of their witch spoon, it was only natural that they would now offer “Salem Witch” plates.

Fortunately there is another Salem image that has appeared in ceramic form over the past two centuries: that of the famous Salem East Indiaman Friendship, which made 17 global voyages before its capture by the British in the War of 1812. Just a few years later (1820), the beautiful Chinese Export Friendship platter below might have been commissioned by some sentimental Salem merchant, and just last year, it was auctioned off by Sotheby’s with an estimate of $6000-$8000 (and a realized price of over $53,000!) It contrasts quite sharply with the last plate, from a line produced by Wedgwood around 1977, which is widely available on the second-hand collectibles market for around $40.

1 Comment | tags: Antiques, Collectibles, Pottery | posted in History, Salem

January 21, 2011

Pottery by the Numbers (and Letters)

By daseger

In anticipation of the presentation next week at the Salem Athenaeum on the “Potteries of Salem” by Rick Hamelin, a Massachusetts Scholar in Residence at the Peabody Historical Society as well as a recognized redware potter, I brushed up on my early redware and slipware: domestic glazed earthenware often glazed and embellished with liquid clay “slip” decoration. I’m somewhat familiar with English slipware but much less so with American, so I was surprised to learn that there were some 75 potteries in the Salem area—located mostly in present-day Peabody and Danvers—in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Looking at examples of this period pottery, both from America and England, I find myself drawn to numbers and letters decoration, which is very predictable given my typographical inclinations. The first three examples of slip-decorated redware (two “tygs”, or large handled mugs, and a flask) below are from the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London; the latter two American plates are from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Cogswell’s Grant, one of Historic New England‘s House Museums, in Essex, Massachusetts.

Apparently Bertram and Nina Fletcher Little, major collectors of American folk art and the owners of Cogswell’s Grant for much of the middle of the twentieth century before its donation to Historic New England, hung this “temperance” plate in the pantry/bar of the house.