18th-Century English Green-Glazed Creamware Teapot and Cover, Swinton, Yorkshire

Details

Description

18th-Century English Green-Glazed Creamware Teapot and Cover, Swinton, Yorkshire
Circa 1770

This creamware teapot and cover is of barrel form, … Read more 18th-Century English Green-Glazed Creamware Teapot and Cover, Swinton, Yorkshire
Circa 1770

This creamware teapot and cover is of barrel form, decorated with a dipped green glaze over an impressed overall rouletted design that covers the body and the domed cover alike, so that the color gathers in the depressions and lightens across the raised ground.

The spout is plain and gently curved. The handle is of double-loop reeded design with large molded flower, leaf and berry terminals, and the cover is surmounted by a large flower-head finial with large leaf terminals.

The teapot is unmarked, as green-glazed wares of this date generally are. The attribution to Swinton rests on comparison of the molds: the spout answers to one recorded by Cox and Cox, and the handle terminal to another illustrated by them.

The saturated green and compact barrel form sit well in a cabinet or bookshelf grouping of English pottery, and the teapot is equally effective as a single note of color on a mantel or side table.

Dimensions
Height: 6 inches (15.2 cm)
Length: 8½ inches (21.6 cm)
Diameter: 5 inches (12.7 cm)

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
Good. Wear consistent with age and use and the glaze bright.

References
Alwyn Cox and Angela Cox, Rockingham Pottery and Porcelain, 1745–1842 (London: Faber and Faber, 1983), Appendix II, no. 15, for the spout, and Appendix I, illustration 42, for a similar handle terminal.

Historical Context
The pottery at Swinton in the West Riding of Yorkshire was founded in 1745 and passed through several partnerships before becoming the Rockingham Works, celebrated in the nineteenth century for its porcelain. Its eighteenth-century output was earthenware made to compete with the Staffordshire potteries, with fine wares introduced from about 1768, and green-glazed wares of this kind were among its more ambitious productions.

The brilliant green lead glaze had been perfected by Josiah Wedgwood, who entered the recipe in his Experiment Book on March 23, 1759, at the close of his partnership with Thomas Whieldon, and it was taken up widely thereafter; used over an engine-turned or rouletted ground, it gave a depth of color that plain creamware could not.

(Ref: NY9376-NIRR) See less