Description:
English creamware, cylindrical tea canister with rounded shoulders and a tarnished replacement metal (silver?) lid; decorated with two black transfer prints of rural lovers. The canister has a slightly concave neck, over a convex shoulder over a molded rim, over a straight-sided body ending in a flat base. One side with a couple known as "Jockey and Jenny", and the other with a girl tickling her sleeping lover, called "The Sleeping Beau," this print is is marked just below the bottom foliage in three distinct areas "Palmer" "Enamel" "Hanly." The mark is extremely difficult to read. Also see teapot (HD 56.011) with the matching transfer prints. Correspondence in 1974 with E. Norman Stretton, who had a similar tea canister which he had considered the only known example of a transfer printed piece with the Palmer signature, elicited the following information. Working in Church Works, Hanley, Humphrey Palmer (d.1778), had two employees, Henry Baker who was his head enameller, printer, and perhaps an engraver; and Thomas Rothwell (1740-1807) who was an enameller and engraver. Both of these men had worked previously in Liverpool, but were in Hanley by 1767 and still there in 1771. Recent research has shown that Henry Baker was the chief printer for Palmer at this time and the engraving for the print is likely to be his work, or work done under his direction. The other print depicts the same man and woman standing and talking in front of of a broken-down fence. There are several adaptations of this scene, such as an earlier version that appeared in a vignette heading the song, "Jockey and Jenny," on p.149 in "Clio and Euterpe or British Harmony, A Collection of Songs and Cantatas" Vol. I, published by Henry Roberts in 1758. Another adaptation appeared on p. 231 of the 3rd edition of "The Ladies Amusement," signed "J. June sculp," which was published in the early 1770s, before 1775. Cyril Cook, in his "The Life and Work of Robert Hancock," illustrates similar transfer prints signed "R. Hancock fecit," which he titled, "Milkmaid at Gate." 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 two subjects, with slight variations, were later used at Liverpool on pottery and porcelain, possibly in the factory of Thomas Wolfe who worked in Liverpool from about 1796-1800 and had other partnerships in Stoke. In Pat Halfpenny's Penny Plain, Twopence Coloured, Transfer Printing on English Ceramics, she refers to Humphrey Palmer as "One of Wedgwood's closest rivals in the Staffordshire Potteries..." Two tea canisters are recorded with printed decoration and bearing the inscription, "Palmer Enamel Hanley".
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+1669 |
