Description:
One of six English delft plates decorated with a bianco-sopra-bianco design of a large flower on a leafy stem topped with a pine cone in the well and two large scrolling pine-cone sprays alternating with two small leaves designs on the rim over a pale blue glaze, and the base of each plate is marked "E*H" in dark blue for an unknown patron. The set is unusual in having an overall bianco decoration, In addition, the use of stylized pine cones and flowers in the central well usually appears as a border decoration. The bianco pine cone border, attributed to Bristol, is found on known dated plates made from 1758 to 1768. There is one other plate known that appears to be part of this set, which was sold by Jonathan Horne, London, 1981. Lipski and Archer's "Dated English Delftware" also shows 5 plates decorated with landscape scenes in blue with the same "E*H", dated 1753. Bianco-sopra-bianco is decorative form where a painted design in a brilliant white pigment stands out against a tinted ground. Late fifteenth-century Italian potters first developed this technique, called 'bianchetto', but its revival in the eighteenth century is probably connected to decorated Chinese export porcelains. Underglaze carved decoration (known as 'an hua') and overglaze white enameling on Chinese porcelains directly inspired their imitation on delftwares. Robert Charleston has shown that the bianco-sopra-bianco technique was first revived at the Swedish factory of Rörstrand sometime before 1745. It seems likely that the decorative technique was brought to England by Magnus Lundberg, a Swedish potter who had worked at the Rörstrand factory. Lundberg eventually settled in Bristol around 1750 to become a pot-painter and master at the Richard Frank's Redcliff Back pottery.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+1134.2 |
