Description:
English circular, apple-shaped caneware teapot with a low-domed cover with an acorn finial and undercut base decorated with an engine-turned basketweave pattern; a plain raised neck rim and low flared foot; and an attached leaf-molded S-shaped spout and molded crabstock handle. The interior has a domed, pierced clay strainer over the spout hole. This type of 'basket work' decoration, along with 'Beehive' and 'arabesque embosed' shapes for teawares, was introduced around 1810. Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) began making trial caneware pieces in 1771 but did not develop a successful clay composition until about 1776 when he began to produce bamboo-shaped caneware teapots. Caneware production was limited until 1786 when a new body was established, which was first catalogued by Wedgwood in 1787 and described as "BAMBOO, or cane-coloured bisque porcelain." "TEA and COFFEE EQUIPAGES" are listed in Class XIII of the 1787 Catalogue as "Teapots, Coffee pots, chocolates, sugar dished, cream ewers, with cabinet cups and saucers, and all articles of the table and dejeune, are made in the 'bamboo' and basaltes', both plain, and enriched with Grecian and Etruscan ornaments." All the established forms of decoration and ornamentation used on black basaltes were applied to caneware - molding, engine-turning, sprigged ornamentation, encaustic painting - but the range of pieces was far more restricted and the quantities far smaller. According to Robin Reilly, Josiah Wedgwood's caneware and the cane bodies of the other manufacturers, such as Turner, Spode, Mayer, Wilson, Minton and Davenport who followed his lead, were so different from anything made earlier that it is legitimate to credit Wedgwood with its invention. There is a white label attached to base: "01/000-57801 / English Caneware / teapot $95.00 / c. 1820-30" and a dealer's label: "Shreve / Crump & Low Co / Boston."
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+91.079 |
