Description:
English salt-glazed stoneware, slip-cast, heart-shaped teapot with a vase-shaped finial on the heart-shaped cover. and a plain loop handle, press-molded curved serpent spout with a beaked head, and low shaped foot. The teapot is decorated overall with molded, low-relief fruiting vines, which have touches of cobalt blue enamel and gold, a rare survivor of cold gilding. According to Pat Halfpenny and Peter Williams's entry #24 in "A Passion for Pottery," a corresponding block mold made for Thomas and John Wedgwood together with two matching teapots (one formerly in the Enoch Wood Collection), are in the City Museum and Art Gallery (The Potteries Museum), Stoke-on-Trent, and two similar whate examples are in the Northampton Museum and British Museum. A salt-glazed stoneware block for the body of a heart-shaped teapot, with reliefs somewhat resembling those on Deerfield's example, may have been made for potters Thomas (1703-76) and John Wedgwood (1705-80) of the Big House, Burslem, Staffordshire. One footless teapot, formerly in the collection of potter Enoch Wood, appears to have been made from that mold. Hugh Tait also illustrated a similar teapot with a slightly different fruiting vine pattern around the body and relief pattern on the spout. The lid on a variant form is set directly into the pots shoulder, rather than being raised on a flange. Occasionally, heart teapots are decorated in color. The Enoch Wood example has small patches of blue. A striking variation in aubergine enamel has relief details picked out in green and blue. Traces of gilding elaborate reliefs on an example with a flaring foot that echoes the chamfered bottom of the body, which is in the Wadsworth Atheneum collection, Hartford, Connecticut. 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. Colorfully painted stoneware using enameled decoration was being produced in Staffordshire by the mid 1750. Since these pieces required a second firing to fuse the enamels onto the glazed surface, these wares were more expensive than white stoneware.
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+59.044 |
