Description:
English salt-glazed stoneware teacup (with matching saucer, HD 2002.7.2) decorated with a scratch blue design with a rouletted decoration in-filled with cobalt around the exterior rim over three floral sprig, two slightly-scalloped blue lines around the interior rim, and an applied footrim. Around 1750 the decorative technique collectors now call "scratch blue" became popular. Simeon Shaw's "The History of the Staffordshire Potteries" (1829) gives an account of this process: "The Flowerers now scratched the jugs and tea ware, with a sharp pointed nail, and filled the interstices with ground zaffre [a mixture of cobalt ore and sand], in rude imitation of the unmeaning scenery on foreign porcelain; and this art the woman were instructed..." This technique did indeed imitate the more expensive blue and white porcelain, often depicting stylized flowers and rouletted borders such as this example. In 1988, a fragment of a scratch-blue saucer was found at the Nims House site in Deerfield. Tea was normally drunk from small, handleless cups and saucers. Handles on tea cups became an option in the 1720s, but handless cups remained popular into the early 19th century, because they transported far more easily and suffered less damage in shipping.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2002.7.1 |
