Description:
English white salt-glazed stoneware jug decorated with an applied medallion with a crown over the initials "GR" for King George III (1738-1820) done in a variant of scratch blue decoration known as debased scratch blue, which was produced in England from about 1765 to the early 19th century. Although Staffordshire white stoneware had been perfected by about 1720, its possibilities for mass-production were not fully exploited until the 1740s. Then the techniques of press-moulding, slip-casting and enamelling were developed, and the drabness of the greyish stoneware surface was successfully relieved by the addition of all-over decoration. The jug has bands of reeding around the top and bottom; the body is decorated with loosely executed debased scratch blue foliage; and there is an applied strap handle. 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 depiciting stylized flowers and rouletted borders.
Subjects:
Pottery; Enamel and enameling; glaze (coating by location); Stoneware Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+54.034 |
