Large English Creamware Pierced Fruit Basket, Diamond Shape With Shell Corners, Staffordshire or Yorkshire Circa 1775–1785

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Description

Large English Creamware Pierced Fruit Basket, Diamond Shape with Shell Corners, Staffordshire or Yorkshire
Circa 1775–1785

This large plain creamware … Read more Large English Creamware Pierced Fruit Basket, Diamond Shape with Shell Corners, Staffordshire or Yorkshire
Circa 1775–1785

This large plain creamware fruit basket is of diamond, or lozenge, shape, a form more often seen in silver than in pottery, and its size sets it apart from the ordinary run of pierced dessert wares. The rim is scalloped and finished with a raised molded lip, and a scallop shell within C-scrolls marks each corner. The flaring sides are fluted, the ribs radiating from the foot and showing on both faces, and they are hand-pierced in a rhythm that follows the outline. Along each side a run of small crescent slits arcs just below the rim, punctuated at intervals by pendant drops of three or four circular piercings and by small quatrefoil clusters beneath. In each corner, directly below the shell, the piercing gathers into a large lozenge-shaped lattice of crescents, hearts and quatrefoils, tapering downward to a pendant of dots, so that the openwork hangs from the shells like a chandelier. The basket is left entirely undecorated, relying on the shaping, the fluting and the piercing for its effect.

At more than fourteen inches across, the basket reads as a centerpiece rather than a serving dish. It sits well on a dining table or sideboard, where the pierced walls throw a pattern of light and shadow onto the surface beneath, and it holds its own on a console or hall table filled with fruit or left empty. Plain creamware of this date works equally with Georgian mahogany and with a pared-back modern interior.

Dimensions
Width: 14 1/4 inches (36.2 cm)
Depth: 10 1/2 inches (26.7 cm)
Height: 3 1/2 inches (8.9 cm)

Marks
Unmarked. Two old collection labels to the underside: a rectangular printed paper label reading DRUMMOND COLLECTION and a circular printed paper label reading P. W. & R. FANE COLLECTION, inscribed 6 in ink.

Provenance
The Drummond Collection (paper label to the underside)
P. W. & R. Fane Collection (paper label to the underside, numbered 6)
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
Good, with a firing line to the openwork at the top and bottom.

References
Donald Towner, Creamware (London: Faber and Faber, 1978), for pierced fruit baskets of the Staffordshire and Yorkshire factories.
Peter Walton, Creamware and Other English Pottery at Temple Newsam House, Leeds (Bradford and London: Manningham Press, 1976).
John D. Griffin, The Leeds Pottery 1770–1881, 2 vols. (Leeds: Leeds Art Collections Fund, 2005).
Designs of Sundry Articles of Queen's or Cream-colour'd Earthen Ware, the Leeds Pottery pattern book of 1783, for pierced fruit baskets in shaped outlines.

Historical Context
Openwork fruit baskets were the showpieces of the creamware dessert service, and the largest of them served as centerpieces for the table. The piercing was cut by hand through the leather-hard clay with small punches and knives before the first firing, a slow and skilled operation that made these among the dearer items in the potters' price lists. A basket of this size, with its walls pierced almost continuously, represented a considerable investment of labor and a corresponding risk in the kiln; the firing line noted in the condition is a reminder of how close to the limit such pieces were pushed.

The diamond outline, the shell corners and the reeded exterior all derive from mid-eighteenth-century silver, translated into the new cream-colored earthenware that Staffordshire and Yorkshire potters were selling across Britain, the Continent and the American colonies from the 1770s. Comparable baskets appear in the engraved pattern books that the Leeds Pottery and Wedgwood issued to their overseas agents.

(Ref: NY10961-urr) See less