Description:
Period English creamware undertray with an later-added version of the scene in black known as "The Tea Party," which looks hand-painted rather than transfer-printed as it should be. The scene has a man and woman seated on a garden bench, tea table with tripod base, dog by the woman's foot, a black servant carrying the tea kettle, and a tree and foliage. As one of the most popular transfer-printed designs of the 18th century, John Sadler (1720-1789) and Guy Green (w.1750-1799) of Liverpool printed several versions of "The Tea Party" over the years, the earliest dated version of which may have been taken from an unidentified pattern book published by John Bowles and Son at the Black Horse in Cornhill in 1756. Wedgwood was known to be using this subject by 1763 based on a July 8, 1763 letter to him from John Sadler apologizing for the quality of an engraving of the Tea Drinkers" applied to a creamware teapot. Cyril Cook, in his "The Life and Work of Robert Hancock," illustrates versions of "Tea Party" transfer prints with examples signed, "R. Hancock fecit," but noted that none of the original engravings have been identified, and that there is no record of the source from which Hancock adapted the basic design. After his engraving apprenticeship ended in 1753, Robert Hancock (1730-1817) worked at the Battersea Works and Bow Porcelain Works before joining the Worcester Porcelain Company of Dr John Wall (1708-1776) where he worked from from 1756 to 1774 engraving copperplates for transfer-printing on porcelain, using designs adapted from contemporary engravings and paintings; many of his designs appear in "The Ladies Amusement." "The Tea Party" was often combined with "The Shepherd." These overglaze black transfer prints were used on Wedgwood's printed creamwares and on creamwares produced at the Liverpool Herculaneum pottery and at Cockpit Hiil, Derby, and also found on Caughley, Worcester, and Liverpool porcelains. The "Tea Party" pattern is also found on a teacup and saucer (in the Wadsworth Atheneum) cited by Elizabeth Pratt Fox in "The Great River" as "the earliest example of transfer-printed pottery known to have been used in the Connecticut Valley. The garden tea party scene epitomized gentility and reflects the fashion consciousness and affectations of its owner." The owner, Reverend Eliphalet Williams (1727-1803) of East Hartford, who descended from the Rev. William Williams of Hatfield and the Rev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton, was one of the most influential men in central Connecticut in his time.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+68.004 |
