Mid 18th Century English Delftware Blue and White Chinoiserie Sauce Boat

Details

Description

English Delftware Blue and White Chinoiserie Sauce Boat, London
English, London, Circa 1750–1760

This English delftware sauce boat takes its … Read more English Delftware Blue and White Chinoiserie Sauce Boat, London
English, London, Circa 1750–1760

This English delftware sauce boat takes its rococo form from contemporary silver, with a long curved spout, a waved and scalloped rim feathered in blue, and a twisted crabstock handle dressed at its upper end with blue scrolls and dots. The body is painted in blue with a chinoiserie landscape: a fenced pavilion and a tall tree of clustered foliage, a large pierced rock, a tiered pagoda-like rock and sprigs of pine, set against islands with distant hills and flights of birds, while beneath the spout a stylized tree rises on twisted stems. The interior carries a feathered blue border along the rim and a single flower sprig on a dotted stem in the well. The underside is glazed within an oval foot rim wiped clean of glaze, showing the buff earthenware body.

On a sideboard or among a collection of blue and white, the sauce boat holds its own as a sculptural object, and it sits naturally beside English delftware plates or Chinese export porcelain on open shelves or in a cabinet.

Dimensions
Height: 4¾ inches (12.1 cm)
Width: 8½ inches (21.6 cm)
Depth: 3¾ inches (9.5 cm)

Provenance
Jonathan Horne Antiques, London, 1982 (with label)
Philadelphia private collection (with L.L.L. Collection label)
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

References
Frank Britton, London Delftware (London: Jonathan Horne, 1987), p. 166, no. 166.
John C. Austin, British Delft at Williamsburg (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, in association with Jonathan Horne Publications, 1994).
Michael Archer, Delftware: The Tin-Glazed Earthenware of the British Isles (London: HMSO, in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1997).

Historical Context
Sauce boats were among the most ambitious forms attempted by the English delftware potteries, their swooping silver-derived shapes testing the limits of soft tin-glazed earthenware, which is why comparatively few survive. The color of the blue and the style of painting point to a London workshop, and Frank Britton illustrates a similar example in London Delftware.

John Austin, cataloguing the smaller example at Colonial Williamsburg, records the shape in two sizes, the larger usually painted with European landscapes, which makes this chinoiserie-painted example of the larger size a rare counterpart. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s blue-painted London sauce boat, attributed to the Lambeth High Street pottery, likewise has a flower spray in the well and a foot rim wiped clean of glaze.

(Ref: NY10788-umrx) See less