Gerald's Musings

A few thoughts about life, the universe, and everything in a porcelain dealer's mind.

Is this a teapot I see before me, its handle towards my hand....

An Octagonal Creamer of narrow upright form with a high handle belonging to the N4 Group with an attractive floral motif and blue rim.

I believe this creamer features as Figure 14 in an article by Jean Barratt in issue No.15 (2010) of New Hall and Friends concerning The N4 Group
about which I have heard very little since.

Well no one seems to have found confirmation that the below teabowl and saucer are Keeling, or N4, or indeed anything else; every thing seems to have gone very quiet since Jean’s article in the New Hall and Friends review 15 for 2010…. But the article had further pictures of N4 items and they include the blue rimmed single rose decorated high handled jug…..not just the same pattern but the same jug as you can see from the typically grubby kiln ash effect and a couple of tiny blemishes evident on the piece which I have to hand. If you have a look at this website after its next revision it should show a coffee cup in the same pattern which also follows Jean’s description.

These have been lurking for some time awaiting new developments which are clearly not coming from Michael. Mind you his very model of an amateur keramicist is worth it.

the paste is consistent with a slightly wooden ring to it and usually a little smoky staining. The translucency is good however but creamy buff and reminds me of some late Caughley

Polychrome an example of which I am attaching, marked incidentally with a green ‘C’. I gather both Geoffrey Godden and David Thorn had backed this diagnosis

Unidentified Creamer

This is a strikingly handsome jug. In spite of elaborate moulding and extensive intricate gilding it is in immaculate condition. It has passed through knowledgeable hands but it remains unidentified. It was part of Geoffrey Goddens Reference Collection some of which has now been dispersed. That is where my title comes. Geoffrey often leaves cryptic or helpful observations. I think this one comes in the former category. It is not an unknown style. Michael Berthoud has one of identical 3 footed round shape and moulding though a quite different pattern under the simple heading….. "Unidentified". I have made no further progress and am willing to allow the next contestant to take up the “problem”

Teapot Challenge

One of the main joys I have is in finding things that others have missed and some porcelain offers more opportunities than most. This teapot was in a group of very similar pieces, in the same pattern known as Mansfield, which it only acquired at least a century after these were made. I have forgotten why. Since I know people read this, because one long-standing East Anglian customer had identified the teapot as Lowestoft from a similar experience within hours of it appearing, I hope someone will remind me where the name came from. There is a charm to Lowestoft, (the porcelain not the town) that I can't quite identify but I know it is still Geoffrey Godden's favourite having also been his first.

This is the second interesting Lowestoft piece I have found at a view catalogued as Worcester recently and I expect them every time now. Liverpool offers similar opportunities but I don't find them anything like as easy to identify. And then of course there's Miles Mason and Thomas Wolfe for which country gentlemen area more use than a reference book!

New Hall Pattern 984

New Hall pattern 984 is about the first number to be employed for Bone China wares at New Hall when the Company decided to abandon its Patent and production of hard paste porcelain which was originally obtained by William Cookworthy at Plymouth, passed from there with his manufactory when it moved to the Bristol works of Richard Champion, and was then sold to the Consortium of Staffordshire Potters who created the New Hall Pottery. They adapted the recipe until their Porcelain was as much "Hybrid hardpaste" as those whose methods and production techniques may not have been quite so above board or patent.

In the end the bone china production refined by Spode and Minton reached the standard at which even New Hall was persuaded to switch to a recipe which Bow had worked on the best part of a century earlier.
Pattern 984 would have been introduced in the 2nd decade of the 19th Century. It shows a good white paste and fine gilding with little wear and is colourfully bat printed with an image of "Tinmouth Priory".
I could find no reference to a Teignmouth Priory but a search for Tynemouth was more rewarding as the print shows some resemblance to the engraving by Miller of Turner's painting from the sea of the ruins of Tynemouth Priory on the Northumbrian coast where Saxon dukes, monks and nuns were regularly dispatched, or worse. Researching New Hall sources has, according to Pat Preller, been made all the more laborious by the practice of using isolated pictures from a good many different publications, rather than taking one book and following most of its illustrations.

Intriguing Vessel

This unusual piece of blue and white pottery came in a group of otherwise early English Porcelain items. It did occur to me that it might have been present for practical purposes if some was taking their time in deliberation! My guess is that it is early 19th Century and continental faience though it could be latish Dutch Delft. Suggestions as to origin or purpose would be most welcome.

“As I thought….or as Uncle Podger in Three Men in a Boat would have said….”it’s alright I’ve found it myself”! This is indeed a Bourdaloue but a very different shape from the usual form often known as a “crinoline slipper”. Named apparently after a French gent of that name and nicknamed for its convenient usage.

Worcester Bowl

It is sometime since I stopped and thought about something and I don’t have time now either but I just came upon this picture by chance……. It is a Worcester bowl and it dates from ca 1768 -75 which was an important time for ceramic developments apace amongst the developments of the Industrial Revolution. Worcester porcelain was being taken to London by way of the River Severn and the Bristol and English Channels pending development of transport by means of canals and then railways. Pieces of this fine quality porcelain found their way to the ateliers of decorators like James Giles and retailers like Mortlock in Oxford Street but this little bowl didn’t have to go through all that.

The decoration as you can see is a little naïve and unorthodox. I discussed it quite recently with the curator of the Royal Worcester Museum. He confirmed the identifaication as Worcester production but took the view that whilst it wasn’t London decorated, it wasn’t painted in the Factory Shop either. He felt that it was probably a local decorator in Worcester perhaps with connections in the Pottery, who had a particular interest and I would say ability, in painting Natural History subjects, much as Thomas Pardoe was to do on Nantgarw porcelain some 50 years later. The style follows the Queens pattern and the finish the Gold Queens with the charming intervention of a few Worcestershire insects.

JUGS

These two very attractive jugs show the wide use in early English Porcelain of certain Chinese patterns. The enamel painted decoration used here is derived from blue and white porcelain wares of the Kangxi period in China and today is known by the rather cumbersome title of the “Dragons in Compartments” pattern. The confusion is compounded by the tendency for British collectors and experts to apply their own names to some of the specimens. Hence you will find that this pattern is also often referred to as “The Bengal Tiger” whereas in my book that name goes with a pattern much used in Staffordshire and on Lustreware involving another creature altogether, to my mind looking more like a cross between a cow and a sheep.

These two jugs are known as Creamers. The globular “Sparrowbeak” version is an early Worcester specimen used only on this wide-fluted service and representing their earliest use of the pattern in about 1765. Bow may have used the pattern slightly earlier. The high square handled version on the left is by Coalport, at the John Rose factory during the early years when his brother Thomas was also manufacturing hybrid hardpaste porcelain on the site near Ironbridge in 1800-10. Both enamel and gilding are of outstanding quality. The pattern was more extensively used in Chamberlains’ decoration at Worcester but the quality by then is less consistent. It is also frequently confused with a pattern of Kylins known by another unexplained title of “Bishop Sumner’s pattern” as nobody seems to know which Bishop Sumner it refers to, and there were a number. The observant will have noticed that unbeknownst to the writer this item has appeared directly below a picture of him holding a Plymouth teapot in the very same pattern which would date from ca 1768-70. The only other one of these that I have been able to trace was to Norwich Castle Museum.

This is a nicely potted scalloped rimmed teabowl and saucer with a good white translucency well printed in one of those Oriental scenes probably referred to as some sort of Pagoda.

My web-site programmer often complains that my pictures are out of focus....well this is not me it's Miles or CJ smudging the transfer on the bowl which must have been a very trying and tiring business.

These references are to the Mason family. Miles Mason was a very interesting chap who got into all sorts of things. He was a London trader who handled Oriental wares including blue and white Chinese porcelain....funny how things come round again even if they are going in the opposite direction. That was in the last decade of the 18th Century and he was involved in certain activities which led the East India Company to stop importing Chinese China....just when the Tea was rolling in. So that opened a few doors. Miles married money and bought a business and then built a pottery and another one and ended up making blue and white cups and saucers. Somehow I always feel this has the wrong ending.

Anyway here is an example of what he was doing....or at least I hope it is.
I do tend to find that whenever I put a label on a blue and white oriental piece assuring the Fair-goers that that is the case, a couple of quite charming old boys from the heart of the Cotswolds look earnestly at it and ask if I'm sure. "Shouldn't the chap leaning out of the second floor window be looking to the left? or shouldn't the third man on the bridge have an umbrella (he's probably like me and left it in the pub)? And of course the posts in the fence should be white not dark".
Of course... I was only kidding I expect it's Coalport. "No I don't think so, but I haven't got my Coalport folio with me".
And then of course it's been clobbered.... small wonder I say.

However it seems to have survived and the gilded clobbering is actually very good, just a little rubbing on the rim of the saucer. There are I gather dozens if not hundreds of variations to the clobbering and as the pattern variations are manifold the whole subject passes into a Maths field beyond O level 1954 and I can as a result be persuaded to part with for a very modest fee.

This shows an obconical creamer in a form which I regard as the iconic Factory Y shape. There is nothing else quite like it and this one is in remarkably good condition without any of those ugly firing cracks with which so many pieces emerged from the kiln of   ?  Well I was very taken with the case which Michael Berthoud put to the New Hall and Friends annual gathering, because I have always felt that Josiah Wedgwood was a serious man and would not have mentioned Baddeley Booth in jest when he contested Richard Champion's patent before Parliament on behalf of the rest of the Staffordshire potters. Whoever made the Y porcelains produced simple wares of a calibre and character that I am happy to promote and display 200 years later. They had coal and steam and water but they hadn't created electricity or harnessed gas, they hadn't built the rail system or finished the canals.......Factory Y deserves some further intuitive research, inspired guesswork or better still a real discovery. I think it's the least Michael deserves.

An attractive fluted teabowl and saucer which was made at one of those enigmatic porcelain factories in Staffordshire in the last decade of the 18th Century.
It is known as the "Plus Class" group because many of their wares bear a pattern number followed by a little +.  Sure enough both pieces are marked as Pattern Number "161 +"  The pattern is known elsewhere, specifically at New Hall as pattern 140.

This is the other side of the Keeling Teapot which decorates the front of Jean Barratt's book of Keeling Shapes and Patterns in which it is classed as pattern X109
I have it in pride of place on a display cabinet, but, No, sorry, you can't buy it. It is already committed to one of those nice people who collect when the opportunity arises, so I may well enjoy it's company for another couple of months. I do however still have new copies of Jean's book which is well worth it's £35 price tag  + £5 UK postage.

This sort of situation adds to the case for being at least part dealer, part collector. Unless you have a museum or mansion, a spare Ephrussi palace, it is very difficult to buy the wealth of interesting items still on offer unless you can pass on those which are losing their novelty or research significance; and these days there is always the computer image that you can save to remind you of the gems you once owned !

What is it about Pugs that people find so endearing?
This one is only 4" high and being porcelain doesn't snuffle. He is in the classic Meissen style but at present I don't know who made him, figures not really being my field. There are some hieroglyphics on the base and "R" in flowing script incised on his chest (no wonder he's pensive). That should identify him to someone?

This attractive little waisted upright creamer is a bit of an enigma. The moulding is unusual but the handle has a thumb-rest like Keeling's jugs and the outside pattern is Keeling's pattern 125, but the interior border is unfamiliar. It was excluded from Jean's book (below) as uncertain, partly perhaps because it isn't porcelain.

But what was Anthony Keeling making in 1780 before Robert Champion arrived in Staffordshire? There is a trace of blue in the glaze and no translucency and on the base is another enigma - that little figure 8 that seems to crop up so often these days, on porcelain creamware and pearlware?  

With the publication of the new comprehensive A & E Keeling Pattern Book by Jean Barratt as the culmination of 10 years' research I am listing a few items I have available in addition to the admirable volume itself. It is in a softback format similar to Pat Preller's New Hall pattern book and supplement 1, and in my view of a similar calibre.

It is not in general distribution but can be supplied £35, plus packing & postage £5 (UK). I have a few copies, and they can also be obtained from Pat Preller, Rosie Cooke, Peter Cottam or from Jean herself, if one of those is easier.

ISBN 978-989-20-1816-4
141 pages