Derby Porcelain Large Flower-Painted Soup Tureen, Cover and Stand With Gilt Lion Masks and Paw Feet, Circa 1815–1825

Details

Description

Derby Porcelain Large Flower-Painted Soup Tureen, Cover and Stand with Gilt Lion Masks and Paw Feet
Circa 1815–1825

This large … Read more Derby Porcelain Large Flower-Painted Soup Tureen, Cover and Stand with Gilt Lion Masks and Paw Feet
Circa 1815–1825

This large Derby porcelain soup tureen, cover and stand is painted with generous bouquets of garden flowers in the full-blown manner of the Bloor period and enriched with boldly modeled, solid-gilt lion masks and paw feet. The oval tureen has a swelling body divided into panels by molded vertical ribs, with a beaded band beneath the broad gilt rim, and stands on four gilt paw feet, each issuing from a lion mask applied to the body above it. Upswept reeded loop handles, tied at the center and lined in gilt, spring from further lion masks at either end. The domed, paneled cover has a beaded edge and a reeded bail handle with gilt terminals en suite.

The sides of the tureen are painted with large sprays, one centered on a striped iron-red and white bloom among pink roses, purple double flowers, convolvulus and sweet peas, and the ends with full pink cabbage roses among purple double flowers, convolvulus and auriculas. The cover carries four further sprays, including a flamed red and yellow tulip. The shaped oval stand has a molded beaded edge within a gilt band, its border painted with a series of smaller bouquets around a plain white well.

Dimensions
Overall
Width: 16¼ inches (41.3 cm)
Depth: 12½ inches (31.8 cm)
Height: 10 inches (25.4 cm)

Tureen and Cover
Width: 13¾ inches (34.9 cm)
Depth: 9½ inches (24.1 cm)
Height: 9¾ inches (24.8 cm)

Stand
Width: 16¼ inches (41.3 cm)
Depth: 12½ inches (31.8 cm)
Height: 2 inches (5.1 cm)

Marks
Painted on the underside of the tureen in red enamel with a crown above crossed batons and dots, and the letter D.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

References
John Twitchett, Derby Porcelain 1748–1848: An Illustrated Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2002).
Geoffrey A. Godden, Godden’s Guide to English Porcelain (London: Granada Publishing, 1978).
For the form at an earlier date, compare the Derby sauce tureen, cover and stand with lion-mask-and-paw feet and bail handles with lion-mask terminals, circa 1795, in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, accession number 2024-62,A–C.

Historical Context
Robert Bloor, formerly a clerk at the works, bought the Nottingham Road factory in Derby in 1811, and this tureen belongs to the first half of his proprietorship, the Bloor period. The hand-painted red mark of a crown, crossed batons and D was in use from about 1800 until about 1825, when printed Bloor Derby marks replaced it; taken with the bone china body and the bold Regency gilding, it places the tureen at circa 1815–1825. The shape itself was not new. A Derby sauce tureen of about 1795 at Colonial Williamsburg stands on the same lion-mask-and-paw feet and has the same lion-mask bail handles, showing that the factory carried a neoclassical model of the Duesbury years forward into the Regency, when the taste for Greek and Roman ornament in silver and furniture made it newly fashionable.

The loose, naturalistic bouquets, set directly on the white ground without borders, are typical of Derby flower painting of these years, the period in which painters such as Moses Webster worked at the factory. The painting is unsigned, as is usual, and no attribution to an individual hand is proposed. A tureen of this size, with its stand, would have been among the principal pieces of a large and costly dinner service.

(Ref: NY10207-nrru) See less