Description:
English creamware strainer or drainer pierced with an openwork pattern in the shallow circular bowl and two flat, tab handles with concave sides on opposite sides of the bowl, which is impressed "WEDGWOOD" and "57" with the "7" reversed on the underside base." This creamware strainer is similar in form to silver punch strainers. This object appears in Wedgwood's Queensware factory shape book as no. 1052 and is called an "orange drainer." Food historian Ivan Day has referred to this form as an "orange strainer" to strain orange seeds and pulp from the punch bowl. He suggested that this is the original term for the form and comes from a Wedgwood pattern book of the early 19th century. Enoch Booth (c.1703-1773) of Tunstall, England, developed the fine, light-colored earthenware now known as creamware in the early 1740s using the various improvements in body, glaze, and firing; but it was Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) who perfected and successfully marketed the ceramic body. Wedgwood’s version of creamware resulted from many experiments with white clays and improved glazes; by 1762, he had developed a light, sturdy, refined, and yet inexpensive cream-colored earthenware body. Wedgwood described the new product as "a species of earthenware for the table, quite new in appearance, covered with rich and brilliant glaze, bearing sudden alterations of heat and cold, manufactured with ease and expedition, and consequently cheap." Middle-class consumers rushed to purchase creamware, bringing the popularity of alternative ceramics such as tin-glazed earthenware and salt-glazed stoneware to an end.
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+92.011 |
