Description:
With no Chinese porcelain prototypes to copy, British ceramic tea canisters of the 18th century took several different forms. They are mostly, however, square or octagonal with a wide cylindrical lip, and seem to derive from the japanned metal canisters used for displaying and dispensing tea and coffee in grocers' shops. By contrast, smarter tea canisters of glass or silver tended to copy the wooden tea chest, complete with its wavy metal edging and corners. Only later in the century was the little baluster-shaped canister copied by English porcelain factories (for example, Worcester) which imitated Chinese vase-like versions made solely for export. English creamware, circular tea canister with a replacement domed lid with an acorn knob and molded lip, decorated with two black transfer prints on the sides. One print, known as "The Shepherd," shows a shepherd wearing a hat and holding a crook, with his dog and four sheep under a tree and a church in the background. The other print, known as "The Tea Party" or "Tea Drinkers" depicts a man and woman seated on a garden bench under a tree before a three-legged table set with a tea service, a dog by the woman's feet, and a black servant filling the kettle. 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 creamware 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+82.053 |
