1755 Longton Hall Porcelain Openwork Leaf Dishes, Pair, Green and Puce, Staffordshire

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Longton Hall Porcelain Openwork Leaf Dishes, Pair, Green and Puce, Staffordshire
Circa 1755

This pair of Longton Hall soft-paste porcelain … Read more Longton Hall Porcelain Openwork Leaf Dishes, Pair, Green and Puce, Staffordshire
Circa 1755

This pair of Longton Hall soft-paste porcelain dishes is of flared round form, each finely molded and pierced with lapping leaves picked out in bright green and puce. The leaves are arranged in two opposed sprays, each springing from a pair of crossed stalks molded in bold relief at opposite sides of the well. The large, deeply lobed leaves spread outward so that their rounded lobes form a boldly indented rim, while smaller leaves lie over one another toward the center. Across the flaring sides the porcelain is cut clean through between and within the lobes, leaving a scatter of openings of teardrop and irregular shape, and over the solid base of the well the same openings are molded as shallow hollows, so that the pattern of openwork carries across the whole dish.

Each leaf is edged with a broad band of yellow-green that follows its lobed outline and rims every opening, leaving the body of the leaf white, and the surface is molded with a fine crinkled texture like that of a living leaf. The stalks are washed in puce, and the midribs and fine branching veins are drawn in puce out to the margins. The effect is a trompe l’oeil of foliage in the naturalistic rococo taste. The coloring reads a little differently on each dish, as is usual with hand-colored wares of this kind: one is a brighter, yellower green and is finely peppered with dark specks in the glaze from the firing, while the other is more softly shaded, its veining lighter and pinker. Another dish of this form, from the Katz Collection, is illustrated by Bernard Watney in his standard work on the factory, and a dish of the same shape and design is in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York.

Leaf-molded dessert wares are the most recognizable of all Longton Hall productions. In the mid-1750s the factory took up the naturalistic leaf and vegetable forms then fashionable at Chelsea and Meissen and made them very much its own, producing dishes, sauceboats, tureens, cream jugs and teapots formed of overlapping cabbage, lettuce, strawberry and vine leaves, edged in green and veined in puce or pink, often with twig or stalk handles. Pierced examples, in which the openwork between the leaves was cut before firing, are considerably less common than the solid leaf dishes and demanded confident handling of a glassy soft-paste body that the factory never fully tamed in the kiln. Dishes of this type were made for the dessert, when fruit, sweetmeats and creams were set out on the table in a display of naturalistic porcelain.

The pair shows to best advantage on plate stands in a cabinet or on a dining-room sideboard, or displayed either side of a mirror or chimneypiece, where light falling across the dishes brings out the openwork. The green and puce palette sits comfortably with English and Continental porcelain and with botanical prints.

Dimensions
Diameter: 7½ inches (19.1 cm)
Height: 2 inches (5.1 cm)

Marks
Unmarked, as are most Longton Hall wares; the factory’s mark of crossed L’s with dots in underglaze blue is found only occasionally. Each dish bears on the underside a gold foil dealer’s label printed “GUARANTEED / JAS. A. LEWIS / & Son, Inc. / 57 EAST 57th STREET / NEW YORK N.Y. / GENUINE,” together with older paper labels inscribed in pencil and ink with cabinet and shelf positions.

Provenance
Private New York Collection
Jas. A. Lewis & Son, Inc., New York
Albert Amor Ltd., London
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
Perfect condition.

References
Bernard Watney, Longton Hall Porcelain (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), figure 58A, for another dish of this form in the Katz Collection; the standard monograph on the factory, which illustrates and discusses the leaf-molded dessert wares of the middle period.

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York: Longton Hall pierced dish of the same shape and design as the present pair, circa 1755, 7 13/16 inches in diameter and 1 5/8 inches high, accession number 1992-5-3 (Smithsonian record ID chndm_1992-5-3), gift of Wendy Vanderbilt Lehman; the museum also holds a second Longton Hall pierced dish, 1992-5-4, and a pair of fruit platters, 1755–1760, 1992-5-1 and 1992-5-2, from the same gift.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London: Longton Hall dish in the form of overlapping lettuce leaves with light green edges and pink midribs and veins, circa 1755, accession number C.50-1944 (bequeathed by Miss Helena Hill), and a plate with a border of nine strawberry leaves with green margins and purple-touched veins, circa 1755–1760, accession number C.704-1925 (given by E. F. Broderip), both in the Ceramics galleries, Room 139.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Longton Hall punch pot molded with overlapping vine leaves and bunches of grapes, circa 1755, acquired 2016.

Historical Context
Longton Hall, on the southern edge of what is now Stoke-on-Trent, was the first porcelain factory in Staffordshire, in production from 1751 under the salt-glazed stoneware potter William Littler (1724–1784) and his partners. Its glassy soft-paste porcelain is remembered above all for the leaf-molded tablewares and flower painting of its middle period, about 1754 to 1757. The venture closed in 1760, the remaining stock of more than ninety thousand pieces being sold at Salisbury, which makes it one of the shortest-lived of the early English porcelain factories and its wares correspondingly scarce.

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