Description:
English delft circular dish with a scalloped rim decorated with blue, purple, yellow, and white. The well is decorated with a chinoiserie scene of a Chinese man with a staff walking in front of a yellow, purple, and blue pagoda with three fences and trees; surrounded by a narrow band of yellow, purple, and blue trellis diaper and floral sprays. The rim is decorated with bianco-sopra-bianco, a decorative form where a painted design in a brilliant white pigment stands out against a tinted ground, with three groups of three pine cones with scrolling leaves, a pattern closely associated with Bristol. Plates with this design are known dated 1763 and 1764, and this bianco border is found on plates and bowls made in the period 1758-1768. This same border appears on the inside of the Kulman bowl, dated 1764, which depicts the 'Gimo', a Swedish ship that docked at Bristol on October 6, 1764, as well as on a plate inscribed "Daniel Norman 1761," featuring the ship 'Solen' which landed at Bristol in 1761. Anthony Ray suggests that the central design of a Chinese figure emerging from a pagoda may be adapted from a candlestand illustrated in George Edwards and Matthew Darly's "A New Book of Chinese Designs" (London, 1754). Scalloped or lobed rims are seen in English silver salvers, but in all likelihood Asian porcelain served as the ultimate design source for this shape. Bianco-sopra-bianco is decorative form where a painted design in a brilliant white pigment stands out against a tinted ground. Late fifteenth-century Italian potters first developed this technique, called 'bianchetto', but its revival in the eighteenth century is probably connected to decorated Chinese export porcelains. Underglaze carved decoration (known as 'an hua') and overglaze white enameling on Chinese porcelains directly inspired their imitation on delftwares. The bianco sopra bianco technique first appeared in Europe on Italian maiolica of the late 15th or early 16th century but it was not long lived and disappeared. The bianco technique was first revived at the Swedish factory of Rörstrand sometime before 1745, and seems likely that the decorative technique was brought to England by Magnus Lundberg, a Swedish potter who had worked at the Rörstrand factory. Lundberg eventually settled in Bristol around 1750 to become a pot-painter and master at the Richard Frank's Redcliff Back pottery.
Tags:
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