Description:
English miniature or toy white salt-glazed saucer molded in low relief with stylized floral and foliate sprays, and a bird perched on a stalk (see also HD 66.197 for a teacup and saucer in the same pattern). This is a miniature version of a common form, which was used as a toy. 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 glaze on the stoneware was the result of throwing salt into a high temperature oven (1000-1100 degrees), where the heat caused the salt to volatilise and the soda in the salt to combine with the alumina and silica in the clay to form a thin vitreous glass-coating over the surface. That outer layer has characteristic minute pitting. Since there are no factory markings, it is very difficult to link pot with potter. Thomas and John Wedgwood of Burslem sold "1 sett of Enamel White Tea Toys" to Humphrey Palmer of Hanley Green in 1767.
Subjects:
Pottery; glaze (coating by location); Stoneware Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+58.227 |
