Description:
One of two English delft, slab-formed flower bricks decorated with blue on white with floral sprays. The exact use of these containers has been debated for many years. It has been suggested that these bricks could have served as quill holders and inkwells; however, the fact that they often occur in pairs would seem to undermine this theory. Most likely these vessels were used for the display of dried flowers since the containers show little evidence of holding water, exhibiting no mineral deposits. Flowers were commonly used room decorations in the 17th and 18th centuries, and were displayed in flower bricks, vases, pots, and bowls. Unfortunately, pictorial sources demonstrating the use of these objects are rare. Michael Archer has identified a chimney board in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection with a painted image of a bombé-shaped container filled with flowers. The dearth of flower bricks in any other media suggests that their manufacture may have been limited to delftware. This brick is a rectangular closed container decorated with floral and geometric patterns. There is a similar example in Lipski and Archer's, "Dated English Delftware", which is dated 1737 (this flower brick was later owned in the Longridge Collection). The two sides have a large floral arrangement in a vase in a round central reserve, flanked by two stylized blue flowers and surrounded with Chinese trelliswork; and the two ends have a smaller stylized flower and trelliswork. This type of flower vase is also found on London tin-glazed tiles from about 1735-1750. The top has 21 round holes, each of which is surrounded by blue dashes and separated by lines marked with "X" at the intersections. A similar example dated "1737" is in the John Bryan collection, see Marking Time: Objects, People, and their Lives, 1500-1800, p. 244.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+56.002 |
