English Pottery Pearlware Teapot Decorated With Prattware Orange Flowers

Details

Description

Prattware Pearlware Teapot with Orange Ochre Flowers, Staffordshire, Circa 1795–1815
Circa 1795–1815

This cheerful Staffordshire pearlware teapot brings a burst … Read more Prattware Pearlware Teapot with Orange Ochre Flowers, Staffordshire, Circa 1795–1815
Circa 1795–1815

This cheerful Staffordshire pearlware teapot brings a burst of color to any table, painted in the classic Pratt palette with sprays of orange-ochre lily-like flowers, blue-tipped stamens and feathery green leaves against the softly blue-tinted glaze that gives pearlware its name.

Of the traditional globular form with a domed cover and ball knop, the pot is decorated on both sides with four flower sprays beneath a trailing band of orange blossoms on a blue stem, the band repeated on the cover. The spout, handle and knop are picked out with blue stripes and chevron dashes, and blue lines frame the neck, cover and foot. The colors are the high-temperature metallic-oxide pigments of Prattware, painted onto the clay before glazing, so they have a soft, slightly blurred quality quite unlike the sharper look of overglaze enamels, and the whole has the fresh, unaffected charm of English country pottery made for everyday use.

Made for the kitchen and the informal parlor rather than the formal drawing room, this is a piece that still earns its keep. It is a natural fit for a dresser or open kitchen shelving among creamware and blue-and-white, a lively single accent on a breakfast table or mantel, or the anchor of a collection of early English pottery. Its orange, green and blue palette works as easily with painted country furniture and checked linens as it does against the crisp neutrals of a contemporary interior.

Dimensions:
Height: 7 inches (17.8 cm)
Width: 9 1/4 inches (23.5 cm)
Diameter: 5 5/8 inches (14.3 cm)

Provenance:
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition:
Good antique condition.

Historical Context:
Prattware takes its name from the Pratt family, potters at Lane Delph and later Fenton in Staffordshire, because the earliest identified pieces of this type happened to be marked "PRATT." The term has since become generic for creamware and pearlware decorated in a restricted palette of high-temperature colors: orange-ochre from antimony and iron, green from copper, blue from cobalt and brown from manganese. These pigments could withstand the glaze firing, making the wares durable and inexpensive, and they were produced not only in Staffordshire but in Yorkshire, Tyneside, Liverpool, Devon, South Wales and Scotland from about 1780 to 1840. By the early nineteenth century tea drinking was firmly established in British life, and boldly colored pots such as this were not reserved for the drawing room but brought color and cheer to the daily ritual in kitchens and informal parlors. See less