Description:
English fork and knife (HD 65.228) with white salt-glazed stoneware handles with handles decorated with floral sprays in pink, yellow, blue, green and purple. The fork has two steel tines, and the knife has a scimitar-shaped steel blade echoing the handle's pistol-grip shape. As well as in pottery, 18th-century handles for knives and forks were made in a broad range of materials, including metal, stone, bone, or horn. Typically, spoons were purchased separately and made entirely of metal. English salt-glazed stoneware and lead-glazed agateware cutlery handles survive in somewhat greater numbers than do creamware types, and this pair with its brightly colored floral decoration imitates more expensive Chinese export porcelain handles popular at the time. Hard and soft-paste porcelain versions variously were made in China, on the European continent, and in England. Several 18th-century documents record ceramic handles. The account and memorandum books for Thomas Whieldon's Fenton Vivian Factory include a Nov. 7, 1749, entry for the sale of "32 desert handles" to a Mrs. Broad and presumably refers to handles for dessert knives and forks. Simeon Shaw stated in his 1829 "History of the Staffordshire Potteries" that Whieldon supplies "knife hafts, for Sheffield cutlers." Supporting this are agateware knife and fork handles that were excavated at the Fenton Vivian site. In the sales-account books of Thomas and John Wedgwood, of the Big House, Burslem, a November 29, 1765 entry credits the account of "Cousin Josia Wedgwood" with "Knife handles and a set of Red printed Tea and c." valued at seven shillings, six and a half pence. The ceramic-handled cutlery market extended to America as well as evidenced by the 1770 inventory taken at the Williamsburg palace of Gov. Botetourt, the last Royal Governor of Virginia. Listed in his Butler's pantry are: "5 Green handle carving knives and forks and 1 ditto white china handle 1 Case containing 1 doz Knives and 1 doz Forks with China Handles." The 1771 estate inventory of Anthony Hay, one time keeper of Williamsburg's Raleigh Tavern, includes entries for "1 Walnut Knife Box" and "63 White Handle Knifes....do Forks." These handles could have been made in stoneware, earthenware, porcelain, or bone. 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. Since these pieces required a second firing to fuse the enamels onto the glazed surface, these wares were more expensive than white stoneware.
Subjects:
Pottery; Enamel and enameling; glaze (coating by location); polychrome; Stoneware Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+65.228A |
