Description:
English creamware punch bowl decorated with four black transfer prints separated by vertical flower sprays around the sides; a hand-painted, black meandering flower and vine motif around the inner rim interupted with the personalized inscription "JOHN JANSTON" at the top center; a rococo band of scrolls and flowers around a transfer-printed three-masted ship with a red and white striped flag and blue and green water in the center well; and an impressed "wedgwood" and circle on the underside of the footed base. The bowl was probably personalized for John Janston by an enameller in Liverpool. Josiah Wedgwood's creamware was transfer printed by John Sadler (1720-1789) and Guy Green (w.1750-1799) of Liverpool, who worked together until Sadler's retirement in 1770; Green continued alone, printing Wedgwood's creamware at least until Josiah's death in 1795 and possibly as late as 1799. The four transfer-printed scenes on the sides are "The Tea Party" or "Tea Drinkers," "Neptune in his Car," "The Pipe and Punch Party," and "The Shepherd." Sadler and Green printed several versions of "The Tea Party" over the years, the earliest dated version of which may have been taken from an unidentified pattern book published by John Bowles and Son at the Black Horse in Cornhill in 1756. Wedgwood was known to be using this subject by 1763 based on a July 8, 1763 letter to him from John Sadler apologizing for the quality of an engraving of the Tea Drinkers" applied to a creamware teapot. Cyril Cook, in his "The Life and Work of Robert Hancock," illustrates versions of "Tea Party" transfer prints with examples signed, "R. Hancock fecit," but noted that none of the original engravings have been identified, and that there is no record of the source from which Hancock adapted the basic design. After his engraving apprenticeship ended in 1753, Robert Hancock (1730-1817) worked at the Battersea Works and Bow Porcelain Works before joining the Worcester Porcelain Company of Dr John Wall (1708-1776) where he worked from from 1756 to 1774 engraving copperplates for transfer-printing on porcelain, using designs adapted from contemporary engravings and paintings; many of his designs appear in "The Ladies Amusement." According to Edward Maeder, Historic Deerfield's former Textile Curator, the costume and hair styles of this version of "The Tea Party" date circa 1779. "The Tea Party" is often combined with "The Shepherd." The "Tea Party" pattern is also found on a teacup and saucer (in the Wadsworth Atheneum) cited by Elizabeth Pratt Fox in "The Great River" as "the earliest example of transfer-printed pottery known to have been used in the Connecticut Valley. The garden tea party scene epitomized gentility and reflects the fashion consciousness and affectations of its owner." The owner, Reverend Eliphalet Williams (1727-1803) of East Hartford, who descended from the Rev. William Williams of Hatfield and the Rev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton, was one of the most influential men in central Connecticut in his time.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+1130.1 |
