Wedgwood Pearlware Nautilus Sauce Tureen, Cover and Stand in Yellow and Pink Circa 1800–1815

Details

Description

Wedgwood Pearlware Nautilus Sauce Tureen, Cover and Stand in Yellow and Pink
Circa 1800–1815

This Wedgwood pearlware sauce tureen, cover … Read more Wedgwood Pearlware Nautilus Sauce Tureen, Cover and Stand in Yellow and Pink
Circa 1800–1815

This Wedgwood pearlware sauce tureen, cover and stand comes from the celebrated Nautilus or “Wreathed Shell” dessert service, in which every piece is molded after a real shell. It is painted in soft underglaze washes of lemon yellow and pink beneath the cool, faintly blue pearlware glaze, and the yellow ground is notably scarce.

The tureen is formed as a deep ribbed scallop shell, its cover modeled as the matching valve with a raised hinge and surmounted by a small coiled shell finial in coral orange. It stands on a molded stem above a ribbed shell foot that seats within an oval recess on the stand, framed by a molded coral branch. The stand is shaped as a broad bivalve shell, its hinge edged in pink and its surface streaked with pink rays over a pale green center.

On a sideboard or in a cabinet the tureen makes a striking single piece, and it sits comfortably with creamware, pearlware or other shell-form ceramics in traditional and coastal interiors alike.

Dimensions
Height: 7 inches (17.8 cm)
Width: 9¼ inches (23.5 cm)
Depth: 6 inches (15.2 cm)

Marks
Impressed WEDGWOOD, with the workman’s letter X, on the underside of the stand and of the tureen.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
Good.

References
Elizabeth Bryding Adams, The Dwight and Lucille Beeson Wedgwood Collection at the Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, Alabama, 1992), p. 161 and color pl. 148, for a Nautilus centerpiece and stand in similar colors, dated circa 1815; and p. 279, for further pieces from a Nautilus dessert service.
Wedgwood: Its Competitors and Imitators 1800–1830, Wedgwood International Seminar, p. 9, pl. X, for a nautilus centerpiece.

Historical Context
Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) was an ardent amateur conchologist. Writing to his partner Thomas Bentley on September 15, 1778, he confessed: “I have got my face over a shell drawer, & find my self in imminent danger of becoming a connoisseur. You can scarcely conceive the progress I have made in a month or two in the deep & very elaborate science of shell-fancying.” Shell and seaweed motifs run through his early pattern books, and the Nautilus dessert service, its shapes modeled after real shells, was introduced in Queen’s ware around 1790.

The service remained in production long after Josiah’s death. A pattern-book drawing for a tureen and stand and eight plates, titled “Wreathed Shell Dessert Coloured” and naming each shape by its conchological term, is on paper watermarked 1802, and the colored version, shaded in pinks and yellows, belongs chiefly to the first decades of the nineteenth century; the comparable centerpiece in the Beeson Collection at the Birmingham Museum of Art is dated circa 1815.

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