Description:
English white salt-glazed stoneware miniature or toy teapot with a globular wheel-thrown body, which is a miniature example of a common teapot form, both in silver and ceramics. The teapot has a circular cover with an acorn knop which sits on the pot's raised flange, and one vent hole; molded shaped spout; rolled coil handle with pinched terminal; and turned, flat pedestal foot. This is a miniature version of a common form, which was used as a toy. Crate books or account books of this period list "toy teapots" - playthings for adults and childrent - among the shipments. The word toy could often indicate figures, miniature pots, and other small objects such as perfume flasks. 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 volatilize 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 any pot with a specific 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+78.116 |
