Description:
English white salt-glazed stoneware, miniature or toy press molded teacup and saucer (see also HD 58.227 for a saucer in the same pattern) molded in low relief with stylized floral and foliate sprays and a bird perched on a stalk. 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. Colorfully painted stoneware using enameled decoration was being produced in Staffordshire by the mid 1750. 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+66.197 |
