Description:
English urn-shaped, caneware coffeepot with a domed lid with flattened finial, S-shaped spout, leaf-molded strap handle, broad circular foot, which is painted with encaustic blue bands around rims of the finial, pot, spout, base and foot and impressed "WEDGWOOD" on the underside base. 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. The form of this coffee pot is similar to Shape 294 in the 1817 catalogue. The entire body has been polished smooth on a lathe; the interior of the pot has a thin coating of lead glaze.
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+91.080 |
