Pearlware Prattware Five-Finger Flower Vase or Quintal Circa 1795–1810

Details

Description

Pearlware Prattware Five-Finger Flower Vase or Quintal
Circa 1795–1810

This English pearlware quintal, or five-finger flower vase, is painted in … Read more Pearlware Prattware Five-Finger Flower Vase or Quintal
Circa 1795–1810

This English pearlware quintal, or five-finger flower vase, is painted in the Pratt palette of underglaze colors. Five flaring cylindrical spouts rise in a fan from a flattened, waisted body set on a stepped rectangular pedestal foot. Each face is painted with a climbing vine to every spout, with dark manganese-brown stems and leaves, orange-ochre leaves and dots of cobalt blue, each vine ending in a small bud just below the rim. The rims and the foot are edged with brown bands, and the blue-tinted pearlware glaze pools pale blue in the recesses between the spouts.

The quintal was made to show single stems, and it is at its best with five cut flowers of one kind, such as tulips, ranunculus or sweet peas. Seen flat-on, it sits well on a mantel, a narrow console or a bookshelf, and the ochre, brown and blue coloring suits both English country and more pared-back rooms.

Dimensions
Height: 6¾ inches (17.1 cm)
Width: 8 inches (20.3 cm)
Depth: 2½ inches (6.4 cm)

Marks
Unmarked

Provenance
Private collection, Virginia

Condition
Minor roughness to the rims, as shown in the photographs, with very minor losses to the brown bands. No breaks or restoration.

References
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, C.11-1938: quintal flower holder, lead-glazed earthenware, impressed WOOD, Burslem, Staffordshire, circa 1790.
John and Griselda Lewis, Pratt Ware: English and Scottish Relief Decorated and Underglaze Coloured Earthenware 1780–1840 (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1984).

Historical Context
Flower holders with five radiating spouts were a standard line of the Staffordshire and Yorkshire potteries in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. “Quintal” was the period name, and the pattern books of the Leeds, Castleford and Whitehead factories list the form as the “quintal flower horn” or “five-fingered flower-pot”; it descends from the multi-spouted delftware flower vases of the late seventeenth century. Prattware takes its name from jugs marked PRATT, made by the Pratt family of Lane Delph, later Fenton, but the term is generic for pearlware and creamware painted on the biscuit in high-temperature metallic-oxide colors (orange-ochre, manganese brown, copper green and cobalt blue) beneath the glaze, a palette used by many potteries in Staffordshire, Yorkshire, the northeast of England and Scotland.

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