Description:
English creamware "Leeds Revival" teacup covered with a yellow glaze and decorated with floral sprays in silver luster on the outsides and center well, and "LEEDS POTTERY" stamped on the base. In the late 19th and early 20th century, typical 18th-century Leeds Pottery creamwares were produced by members of the Senior family, primarily James "Wraith" Senior (c.1854-1909) who worked over time with his sons, George William (1882-1970) and James Jr. (d.1917), and his brother-in-law, potter John Thomas Morton (1875-1956). Morton was an apprentice to James Senior circa 1888-1895, and returned to work with the Seniors from 1907 to circa 1913 when he left to establish his own pottery; according to John Griffin, it is virtually impossible to distinguish between pieces made by Morton when potting on his own in Leeds (who also used the impressed "LEEDS POTTERY" mark before establishing a pottery at Airey Hill, Filey, in 1933) and those produced by the Senior brothers. James Senior made various types of pottery, including slipware and tiles, at different sites until sometime between 1888 and 1895, when he started producing creamwares in an 18th-century style, many based on the products and some using the same molds from the Leeds factory of Hartley, Greens & Co.; the Seniors also produced other pieces, particularly pierced wares which were far more elaborate than those produced by Hartley, Greens & Co. Next to the Wedgwood factory, Hartley, Greens & Co. was one of the most successful of the English creamware potteries established in the 18th century, which first published its catalogue or pattern books in 1783 and continued printing them periodically until 1814, with some wares impressed "LEEDS POTTERY." The Senior reproductions often bear that same original impressed "LEEDS POTTERY" mark; the Senior's quality is often more thickly potted than the original, and the glaze often greyer and more thickly applied, which then pooled (often with a green tone) with a very distinct crackled glaze. However, their wares can also be of such high quality that they can be mistaken for the work of earlier factories. Much of the Senior's production was marketed through an antique dealer, William Wood Slee of 30 Duncan Street, Leeds, who claimed to be the manufacturer of "Reproductions of Leeds Pottery." Although it is not known for how many years Slee published a catalogue, the Leeds Museum and Galleries has a copy of an undated Slee catalogue and 1913 price list, in which he states: "The manufacture of Leeds Pottery revived in 1888 by W. W. Slee, employing workmen and using many of the original moulds and patterns obtained from old works." In fact it is now generally believed that he was only selling George Senior's wares. Interestingly, the Slee catalogue also shows covered chestnut bowls, figs. 615, which are not in the original Hartley, Greens & Co. catalogues, but do appear in Josiah Wedgwood's early catalogues as well as the Wedgwood Company's 1920 catalogue that illustrated creamware identical to examples found in its late 18th century catalogues. A teaset with the same decoration as this teacup is pictured in the 1913 W. W. Slee Co. catalogue, fig. 500, which could be ordered in a cream body with blue, silver lustre, or coloured decoration, or in a canary body with silver lustre decoration such as this example. According to John Austin: "Even though tea wares could be acquired with various decoration, there appears to be only one form for each individual piece. Within the tea ware, only the forms and sizes of tea and coffee cups and saucers were enough like their earlier counterparts to be confusing. The size and general appearance of the teapot, the sugar, and the creamer were more like those found in a twentieth-century service. The modern coffee cup can be detected by the terminal of the handle, which is simpler and not as crisply molded as the earlier."
Label Text:
Subjects:
Pottery; glaze (coating by location) Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+56.330 |
