English Creamware Rococo Fruit Baskets and Stands, Pair, Pierced and Shell-Molded

Details

Description

English Creamware Rococo Fruit Baskets and Stands, Pair, Pierced and Shell-Molded, Staffordshire or Yorkshire
Circa 1765–1775

This pair of English … Read more English Creamware Rococo Fruit Baskets and Stands, Pair, Pierced and Shell-Molded, Staffordshire or Yorkshire
Circa 1765–1775

This pair of English plain creamware fruit baskets and stands carries the Rococo taste of the 1760s into the new cream-colored earthenware at its most elaborate. Each basket is of shaped oval form, the deep flaring body divided by molded ribs into panels, the rim rising at the center of each long side to a molded scallop shell framed by C-scrolls and at each end to a pierced scroll handle. The upper part of each panel is hand-pierced with a cruciform device of four heart-shaped arms between small circular openings, so that the walls read as a lattice of light against the glaze. A rope-twist band circles the body at mid-height, below which each panel is molded in low relief with a hanging swag of flowers, and the foot is finished with a second rope-twist band.

The stands repeat the same vocabulary. Each is of shaped oval outline with a scallop shell and scrolls molded at either end, the border pierced with the same cruciform devices between raised scroll ornament, and a rope-twist band framing the plain well on which the basket sits. Both baskets and stands are left entirely undecorated, so that the crisp molding and the glaze, pooling to a pale green in the recesses, carry the whole design. Openwork baskets of this kind were made for the dessert, to hold fruit, sweetmeats or biscuits, the piercing allowing air to circulate around the contents.

A pair gives a room symmetry: set at either end of a dining table or sideboard, or flanking a mirror on a console, the baskets carry their stands with them and need nothing added. At just over ten inches they suit a smaller table or a bookcase shelf as well as a formal setting, and the plain cream glaze sits comfortably with both period furniture and contemporary rooms.

Dimensions
Width: 10 1/4 inches (26 cm)
Depth: 8 1/2 inches (21.6 cm)
Height: 3 3/4 inches (9.5 cm)
Measurements are overall, basket on stand.

Marks
Unmarked, as is usual for creamware of this date. One stand carries an old collector's paper label numbered 59 to the underside.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
Good antique condition, with a repaired section to the base of one stand.

References
Donald Towner, Creamware (London: Faber and Faber, 1978), for the early Staffordshire and Yorkshire pierced baskets and stands in the Rococo taste.
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).
Robin Reilly, Wedgwood, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1989), vol. I, for the Queen's Ware fruit baskets and stands engraved in the 1774 catalogue.
Designs of Sundry Articles of Queen's or Cream-colour'd Earthen Ware, the Leeds Pottery pattern book of 1783, for pierced fruit baskets and stands of related form.

Historical Context
Creamware, a refined lead-glazed earthenware of pale cream color, was developed in Staffordshire in the 1750s and brought to perfection by Josiah Wedgwood in the early 1760s; after Queen Charlotte's patronage in 1765 he named his version Queen's Ware, and potteries in Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Liverpool quickly followed. Light, durable and far cheaper than porcelain, it displaced tin-glazed delftware and white salt-glazed stoneware from fashionable tables within a generation.

Openwork baskets were the showpieces of the dessert. The piercing was cut by hand through the leather-hard clay with small punches and knives, a slow and skilled operation that placed these among the dearer items in the potters' price lists. The shell-and-scroll cartouches, rope-twist bands and hanging swags of this pair derive from Rococo silver and from the white salt-glazed stoneware of the previous decade, and the form is close to the fruit baskets and stands illustrated in Wedgwood's Queen's Ware catalogue of 1774 and in the Leeds Pottery pattern book of 1783.

(Ref: NY10960-nurr) See less