English Porcelain Gold-Ground Botanical Patch Box With Irish References, "Forget Not Erin" Motto

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Description

English Porcelain Gold-Ground Botanical Patch Box with Irish Motto "Forget Not Erin"
Attributed to Coalport, probably London-decorated
Circa 1820

This … Read more English Porcelain Gold-Ground Botanical Patch Box with Irish Motto "Forget Not Erin"
Attributed to Coalport, probably London-decorated
Circa 1820

This small circular porcelain box and cover is attributed to the Coalport factory of John Rose and was very probably decorated in one of the independent London workshops that bought Coalport white ware for the luxury trade. Every exterior surface is covered in a rich matt gold ground, laid in around a profusion of flowers painted first onto the white porcelain, so that each bloom and leaf stands sharply reserved against the gold.

The slightly domed cover carries a full bouquet. A large yellow daisy-like flower and a show auricula, its eye ringed in purple, white and red, are set among deep purple geraniums, a scarlet bloom, yellow ranunculus buds on slender stalks, purple violets and a cluster of small blue-purple flowers with feathery gray foliage, the whole framed by leaves shaded from bright green to purple. A continuous garland of roses and a rosebud, a large pink flower, a second auricula in red and white and further foliage runs around the sides of the box between burnished gold rims.

The interior of the cover reveals the purpose of the commission: a bunch of shamrocks tied at the stems, above a pink ribbon lettered in black "FORGET NOT ERIN." The interior of the box and the flat base are left white.

Boxes of this size were made for the dressing table, to hold patches or rouge, and were sold through the London china shops as small luxury presents. This example combines the fashionable gilded botanical decoration of the Regency period with a private message that can only have been painted to order.

A box this small works best where it will be picked up: on a dressing table, a desk, a bedside table or a small side table in a library, where the gold ground reads against dark wood or leather. It pairs naturally with other Regency porcelain, tortoiseshell and gilt-metal boxes, and with anything Irish in a collection.

Dimensions
Diameter of cover: 3 inches (7.6 cm)
Diameter of box: 2 3/4 inches (7.0 cm)
Height of box: 1 1/16 inches (2.7 cm)

Marks
Unmarked, as is usual for London-decorated Coalport porcelain of this date.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
[Condition to be confirmed in hand. Note a faint curved line to the glazed base, to be checked.]

Historical Context
"Erin," the poetic name for Ireland, came into popular use in the 1790s and was made fashionable on both sides of the Irish Sea by Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies, published in numbers from 1808, whose songs turned the shamrock and the harp into the accepted emblems of Irish feeling. After the Act of Union of 1801 the shamrock was joined to the rose and thistle in the royal badge, but it kept its older meaning as the badge of Ireland itself, worn on St. Patrick’s Day and painted or embroidered on keepsakes. The motto on this box, cast in the language of the "forget me not" tokens exchanged between friends, reads as a personal charge to remember Ireland. It was most likely made for someone of Irish birth or descent living in England, or as a gift sent from Ireland, in the decades between the Union and Catholic Emancipation in 1829, when attachment to Ireland was often expressed in just such quiet, sentimental forms. No other example of the inscription on English porcelain has been traced.

The flowers on the exterior belong to the repertoire of the "florists’ flowers" bred and exhibited by enthusiasts since the seventeenth century, the auricula above all, which was shown in purpose-built "auricula theatres" and remained one of the most prized of collectors’ plants in the early nineteenth century.

Ref: NY10066-ii See less