Wedgwood Creamware Hummingbird, Butterfly and Flowers Plates, Pattern No. 7961, Set of Three Etruria, Staffordshire, Dated 1868

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Wedgwood Creamware Hummingbird, Butterfly and Flowers Plates, Pattern No. 7961, Set of Three
Etruria, Staffordshire, Dated 1868

This set of … Read more Wedgwood Creamware Hummingbird, Butterfly and Flowers Plates, Pattern No. 7961, Set of Three
Etruria, Staffordshire, Dated 1868

This set of three Wedgwood creamware plates is decorated with the Hummingbird and Flowers pattern, No. 7961, each plate printed in brown outline and enameled by hand with a different hummingbird among scattered flowering plants. On the first plate two birds share the composition: one, with a blue-black crest and an iron-red throat, perches on a long arching stem hung with pink and yellow tubular flowers, while a second, green-backed and iron-red at the throat, darts beneath it above two sprays of pink-belled heath. On the second, a hummingbird with a fanned tail of iron-red and black clings to a tendriled vine, opposite a tall stem of seeding grass in ochre and green, with pink blossoms on the rim. On the third, a long-tailed bird with a green breast and a white ruff hangs from an ivy twig, facing a pink butterfly with eyed wings that has settled on a flowering stem among grasses, with a pink daisy-like flower above and a sprig of violet-blue flowers below.

The designs are placed off-center, leaving the middle of each plate open, and the enamels in iron-red, pink, green, yellow, brown and blue stand out against the pale cream-colored body. Each rim is finished with a single gilt band.

Hung together as a group of three or set on stands in a cabinet or bookcase, the plates suit a breakfast room, garden room or powder room, and sit comfortably beside botanical and ornithological prints.

Dimensions
Diameter: 8¼ inches (21 cm)
Height: ¾ inch (1.9 cm)

Marks
Each plate is impressed WEDGWOOD with the three-part date code A2W, in which the first letter stands for the month (April), the middle character for the potter, and the final letter W for the year 1868, together with an impressed workman's mark. The pattern number 7961 is painted on the reverse above the numeral 2, a decorator's or tally number, in iron-red or in black.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition
Excellent. The hand-applied enamels and gilt rims are very well preserved, with fine crazing to the glaze.

References
Robin Reilly, Wedgwood: The New Illustrated Dictionary (Antique Collectors' Club, 1995), for the impressed date-letter system introduced in 1860.
David Buten, Wedgwood Guide to Marks and Dating (Buten Museum of Wedgwood, Merion, Pennsylvania, 1976).
John Gould, A Monograph of the Trochilidae, or Family of Humming-Birds (London, 1849–1861).

Historical Context
Hummingbirds, native only to the Americas, held a particular fascination for Victorian Britain. The ornithologist John Gould exhibited his collection of mounted specimens at the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park in 1851, where it drew some 75,000 visitors, Queen Victoria among them, and published the family in A Monograph of the Trochilidae (1849–1861), illustrated with 360 hand-colored lithographs. Natural history illustration of this kind gave the potteries a new repertory of ornament, and on these plates the birds, insect and plant sprigs are scattered asymmetrically across an open ground in a manner that anticipates the Japanese-inspired taste of the Aesthetic Movement in the following decade.

The plates can be dated closely. From 1860 Wedgwood impressed its earthenware with a three-part code giving the month, the potter and the year of manufacture, and the letter W stands for 1868. The same letter came round again in 1894, but by then the factory mark also carried the word ENGLAND, added from 1891 and absent here, and the plain four-figure pattern number belongs to the series in use before letter prefixes were introduced in the early 1870s. Creamware, the refined cream-colored earthenware that Josiah Wedgwood perfected in the 1760s and named Queen's Ware in honor of Queen Charlotte's patronage, remained in production at the Etruria Works throughout the nineteenth century, and plates of this kind would have formed part of a dessert service.

(Ref: NY10178-xirp) See less