English Creamware Dinner Service, Hicks, Meigh & Co., Green Border, 21 Plates

Details

Description

Hicks, Meigh & Co. English Creamware Part Dinner Service with Green and Purple Border, Twenty-One Plates
Circa 1822–1835

This Staffordshire … Read more Hicks, Meigh & Co. English Creamware Part Dinner Service with Green and Purple Border, Twenty-One Plates
Circa 1822–1835

This Staffordshire creamware part service by Hicks, Meigh & Co. of Shelton comprises twenty-one plates in two sizes, nine dinner plates and twelve side plates. Each is of plain circular form with a gently curved rim and an undecorated well, so that the eye is drawn to the hand-painted border. The edge carries a broad band of bright green enamel, and within it runs a purple rope-twist, or guilloche, of two interlaced wavy lines contained between fine purple lines above and below.

The restraint of the design, a clean neoclassical border against the soft cream color of the glaze, gives the service a freshness that sits as easily on a modern table as it did on a late Georgian one.

The service suits a dining room or kitchen where green is the accent color, and it mixes readily with plain white or cream tableware. A group of the plates also reads well displayed on a dresser or hung as a set on a wall.

Dimensions
Nine dinner plates, Diameter: 9¾ inches (24.8 cm)
Twelve side plates, Diameter: 8¼ inches (21 cm)

Marks
Several plates are impressed “H M & Co”.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
The service is in good antique condition, with minor flaking to the green enamel on several pieces, some of it invisibly repaired. Such wear is typical of enameled earthenware of this age and reflects the working life of the service.

References
Simeon Shaw, History of the Staffordshire Potteries (Hanley, 1829), for a contemporary account of the manufactory of Hicks, Meigh & Johnson at Shelton.
Report of John Spencer to the Factories Inquiry Commission, 1833, in which the works is named as “Hicks, Meigh & Co., at Shelton”.
Geoffrey A. Godden, Encyclopaedia of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks (1964), for the firm and its successive partnerships.

Historical Context
Richard Hicks and his brother-in-law Job Meigh II took over the Broad Street Works at Shelton, in the Staffordshire Potteries, in about 1806–1807. Their traveling representative, Thomas Johnson, was taken into partnership around 1822, and the firm traded as Hicks, Meigh & Johnson until the partnership was dissolved and the works sold in 1835. It was also known in its own day as Hicks, Meigh & Co., the name used by a factory commissioner who inspected the works in 1833, and the impressed initials on this service correspond to that style. The firm is best known today for its richly decorated stone china.
Creamware, the refined cream-colored earthenware perfected by Josiah Wedgwood in the 1760s and named Queen’s Ware under the patronage of Queen Charlotte, was still a staple of the Staffordshire trade in the reign of George IV. Plain shapes finished with a simple enameled border had been its most characteristic table decoration since the 1770s, and this service carries that neoclassical taste into the 1820s and 1830s.

(Ref: NY8650-nmrr) See less