Victorian Old Hall Shell Pattern Tazza Comport, Green Seaweed and Enameled Shells

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Description

Victorian Old Hall Shell Pattern Tazza Comport, Green Seaweed and Enameled Shells
Circa 1861–1886
Old Hall Earthenware Co. Ltd., Hanley, … Read more Victorian Old Hall Shell Pattern Tazza Comport, Green Seaweed and Enameled Shells
Circa 1861–1886
Old Hall Earthenware Co. Ltd., Hanley, Staffordshire, England

This oval tazza, or footed comport, is raised on a spreading pedestal foot and molded at either end with a scroll-and-shell handle, the rim shaped and scalloped in a series of shallow lobes. It is decorated overall in the pattern named Shell, a dense ground of finely branching seaweed and feathery fronds transfer-printed in green over every visible surface: the well and the exterior of the bowl, the stem, and the spreading foot.

Scattered through the green are small stylized scallop shells, their ribbed outlines printed with the ground and hand-enameled over the print in crimson, cobalt blue, and yellow. They are gathered into loose rosette-like clusters and set singly at the stems of the feathery fronds, the same scheme continuing over the exterior, down the stem, and around the foot, and picked out on the molded handles. The enameling is applied freely, a little outside the printed outlines in places, in the manner of Staffordshire hand-finished wares of the period.

On a dining table or sideboard the tazza serves as a centerpiece for fruit, and empty it sits well on a console, library table, or open shelf, where the fine green ground reads as texture from across a room and the enameled shells as color close to. It suits green-and-white schemes, coastal interiors, and collections of English transferware.

Dimensions
Height: 4¾ inches (12.1 cm)
Width: 12 inches (30.5 cm)
Depth: 8½ inches (21.6 cm)

Marks
The tazza is unmarked, the underside glazed within the hollow foot. The green printed mark recorded for this service is a scalloped cartouche enclosing the pattern name “Shell” in script, with a painted numeral “43” alongside, probably a paintress’s or batch number; it is found on companion pieces rather than on the present example.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge.

Condition
Good.

References
Godden, Geoffrey A. Encyclopaedia of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1964, for the Old Hall Earthenware Co. Ltd. marks, dates, and successors.

Wakefield, Hugh. Victorian Pottery. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1962, for the popularity of decorative earthenware, comport forms, and natural history patterns in the mid-nineteenth century.

Gosse, Philip Henry. The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea. London: John Van Voorst, 1854.

Kingsley, Charles. Glaucus; or, The Wonders of the Shore. Cambridge: Macmillan, 1855.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, ‘Shanghai’ pattern soup plate designed by Christopher Dresser for the Old Hall Earthenware Co. Ltd., transfer-printed in black and painted in green, blue, and yellow, for the firm’s continued use of print-and-enamel decoration.

Steve Birks, The Potteries local history archive, “Old Hall Earthenware Co Ltd,” for the transfer of Charles Meigh & Son to the company in March 1861, its status as the first limited liability company in the Staffordshire Potteries, its marks, and the Imperial Parisian Granite name.

Historical Context
The Old Hall Earthenware Co. Ltd. was formed in March 1861, when Charles Meigh the younger transferred the business of Charles Meigh & Son, the family firm that had worked the Old Hall Works at Hanley since 1790, to a new company, with ownership, factory, and output unchanged. It is recorded as the first limited liability company in the Staffordshire Potteries and traded under that name until 1886, when it became the Old Hall Porcelain Works Ltd., which continued until the factory closed in 1902. Its wares were sold under trade names for the body including Imperial Granite and Imperial Parisian Granite, as impressed on some companion plates, the “Parisian” a selling flourish rather than any French connection, part of the wider trade in durable and affordable ceramics for a rapidly expanding middle-class market.

The mid-Victorian period saw a great proliferation of decorative earthenware in which transfer-printed grounds were finished by hand in enamel colors, a practice Old Hall carried into the 1880s with Christopher Dresser’s patterns for the firm. Designs drawn from marine life answered the era’s enthusiasm for natural history, quickened by Philip Henry Gosse’s The Aquarium (1854), which made the seawater tank a fashionable parlor ornament, and by the shore collecting that Charles Kingsley described in Glaucus (1855), the book in which he coined the word “pteridomania” for the fern craze. A dense all-over design of shells and seaweed such as this belongs squarely to that taste.

Ref: NY7248A-irr See less