Wedgwood Pearlware Nautilus Shell Part Dessert Service in Pink and Yellow Circa 1800–1815

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Description

Wedgwood Pearlware Nautilus Shell Part Dessert Service in Pink and Yellow
Circa 1800–1815

This Wedgwood pearlware part dessert service is … Read more Wedgwood Pearlware Nautilus Shell Part Dessert Service in Pink and Yellow
Circa 1800–1815

This Wedgwood pearlware part dessert service is of the celebrated Nautilus or “Wreathed Shell” design, in which every piece is molded after a real shell. It comprises the nautilus centerpiece and its stand, a pair of sauce tureens with covers and stands, three large fluted shell dishes with scrolled handles, and four further shell-shaped dishes in two sizes, all thinly potted and painted in soft underglaze washes of pink, yellow and pale green beneath the cool, faintly blue pearlware glaze.

The centerpiece is modeled on the paper nautilus, its ribbed shell with a spined keel shaded in lilac and green and raised on a coral-pink stem above a foot formed as a pink-striped shell. The tureens are formed as ribbed scallop shells banded in yellow and lilac, their covers surmounted by small coiled shell finials in coral pink; like the centerpiece, they stand on coral stems and striped shell feet that seat within seaweed-molded recesses on their oval shell stands. The fluted dishes curl at one end into a pink-edged scroll, while the remaining dishes are shaped as broad bivalve shells streaked with pink.

Shapes of this kind answered Josiah Wedgwood’s own enthusiasm for shell collecting, and the factory’s pattern drawing for the colored version of the service identifies each shape by its proper conchological name.

Arranged together on a dining table or sideboard, the service makes a complete centerpiece display; the nautilus and the tureens also stand well on their own in a cabinet or on a console, where their pastel colors suit traditional and coastal interiors alike.

Dimensions
Nautilus centerpiece and stand (one)
Height: 10 inches (25.4 cm)
Width: 12½ inches (31.8 cm)
Depth: 8 inches (20.3 cm)

Sauce tureens, covers and stands (two), each
Height: 7 inches (17.8 cm)
Width: 7¼ inches (18.4 cm)
Depth: 6 inches (15.2 cm)

Large fluted shell dishes (three), each
Length: 13 inches (33 cm)
Width: 7 inches (17.8 cm)
Depth: 2½ inches (6.4 cm)

Large shell-shaped dishes (two), each
Length: 12 inches (30.5 cm)
Width: 7½ inches (19.1 cm)

Medium shell-shaped dishes (two), each
Length: 11¼ inches (28.6 cm)
Width: 7¼ inches (18.4 cm)

Marks
Each piece impressed WEDGWOOD, with various workmen’s letters including R, T, X and W.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
Good.

References
Elizabeth Bryding Adams, The Dwight and Lucille Beeson Wedgwood Collection at the Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, Alabama, 1992), p. 161 and color pl. 148, for a Nautilus centerpiece and stand in similar colors, dated circa 1815; and p. 279, for further pieces from a Nautilus dessert service.
Wedgwood: Its Competitors and Imitators 1800–1830, Wedgwood International Seminar, p. 9, pl. X, for a nautilus centerpiece.

Historical Context
Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) was an ardent amateur conchologist. Writing to his partner Thomas Bentley on September 15, 1778, he confessed: “I have got my face over a shell drawer, & find my self in imminent danger of becoming a connoisseur. You can scarcely conceive the progress I have made in a month or two in the deep & very elaborate science of shell-fancying.” Shell and seaweed motifs run through his early pattern books, and the Nautilus dessert service, its shapes modeled after real shells, was introduced in Queen’s ware around 1790.

The service remained in production long after Josiah’s death. A pattern-book drawing for a tureen and stand and eight plates, titled “Wreathed Shell Dessert Coloured” and naming each shape by its conchological term, is on paper watermarked 1802, and the colored version, shaded in pinks and yellows, belongs chiefly to the first decades of the nineteenth century; the comparable centerpiece in the Beeson Collection at the Birmingham Museum of Art is dated circa 1815.

Ref: NY9533-Acir See less