English Creamware Pottery Toy Cat, Whieldon-Type Manganese Sponged Figure

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English Creamware Pottery Toy Cat, Whieldon-Type Manganese-Sponged Figure
English, probably Staffordshire, Circa 1760–1780

This small creamware figure of a seated … Read more English Creamware Pottery Toy Cat, Whieldon-Type Manganese-Sponged Figure
English, probably Staffordshire, Circa 1760–1780

This small creamware figure of a seated cat belongs to the class of inexpensive "toy" animals made by the Staffordshire earthenware potters in the 1760s and 1770s. The cat sits upright on its haunches with its head turned slightly to its left, the pointed ears pricked, the broad muzzle and lidded eyes modeled in low relief and the tail curled forward around the base, the whole conceived in a frankly naive, folk manner. The cream-colored body is dabbed with irregular patches of manganese brown to suggest a piebald coat, with darker touches inside the ears, at the nose and about the forepaws, all beneath a clear lead glaze that pools to a pale green in the recesses. The figure rests on a small mound base modeled as an outcrop of rock.

The cat is press-molded in two halves, joined along a seam that runs up the back, and is hollow and open beneath, the glaze running only a short way inside. The decoration is of the colored-oxide, lead-glazed type associated with Thomas Whieldon (1719–1795) of Fenton Vivian and his Staffordshire contemporaries, though here the manganese is applied as a few bold, spontaneous dabs rather than the clouded tortoiseshell of the better-known tablewares, which gives the little figure much of its charm. As with all such wares, "Whieldon-type" describes a manner rather than a proven maker: none of Whieldon's pottery was marked, and the same glazes were used by William Greatbatch and many other potters of the district.

At just over three inches high, the cat is scaled for a bookshelf, a desk or a mantel grouping with other early English pottery animals, and it sits equally well in a traditional or a pared-back contemporary interior.

Dimensions:
Height: 3⅛ inches (7.9 cm)
Width: 2½ inches (6.4 cm)
Depth: 1½ inches (3.8 cm)

Provenance:
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition:
Good antique condition, with a line on the back along the luting seam.

References:
Pat Halfpenny, English Earthenware Figures 1740–1840, Antique Collectors' Club, 1991.
Leslie B. Grigsby, English Pottery 1650–1800: The Henry H. Weldon Collection, Sotheby's Publications, 1990.
Pat Halfpenny, "Thomas Whieldon: His Life and Work," Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle, vol. 16, pt. 2, 1997.
Simeon Shaw, History of the Staffordshire Potteries, Hanley, 1829.

Historical Context:
In the eighteenth century the word "toy" meant not a plaything but any small decorative trifle, and the Staffordshire potters used it for little ornamental figures of this kind. Whieldon's own account and memorandum book for 1749–1753 lists "toys" among his teapots, bowls and plates, and Simeon Shaw, writing in 1829, recorded that he made "toys and chimney ornaments" colored with zaffre, manganese and copper beneath a lead glaze. Made quickly from simple two-part molds and decorated in a few strokes of colored oxide, such figures were sold cheaply to stand on the mantelpiece, at the opposite end of the ceramic spectrum from the elaborate porcelain figures of Chelsea and Bow, and it is precisely their unstudied modeling and spontaneous decoration that make them prized today as early English folk art.

Cats were among the favorite subjects of the earliest Staffordshire figure makers, modeled in salt-glazed stoneware and solid agate as well as in lead-glazed creamware. Small, fragile and handled every day, relatively few of these modest ornaments have survived in good condition.

(Ref: NY01746X-nrr) See less