A Pinxton discovery, c.1798

Here's an exciting discovery for all Pinxton fans.
 It's a rare Pinxton coffee can, painted with pattern 221, with an oval scene of figures by a house on a trackway, within a wide gild line and flowerhead border, with gold to the rim and band to the base.   
Marked to the base with a red inscription 'In Derbyshr', also 221, and dating to circa 1798. 

This small firm has a fascinating story. 
From the 2011 Moorabool Catalogue: "Pinxton existed for a few glorious years, 1796-1813.  John Coke, a local gent, sent clays to William Duesbury of the Derby factory to test. William Billingsley, an artist at Derby at the time, came to correspond with Coke, and the first trial firing of the resulting factory was in 1796. Billingsley remained until 1799, when he left to establish his own concern at Mansfield, and the Pinxton works limped along with various partners, including the Derby artist John Cutts, until it ceased production in 1813 -although they were probably not making porcelain for the last years."
 

 What makes this coffee can so exciting is the pattern, which is an important documentary pattern, being known as the 'Brookhill Hall Service' type. This service showed views around the estate of John Coke, co-founder of the Pinxton factory alongside William Billingsly. Sheppard states -'A saucer and a coffee can of this pattern have been seen with the number 221 in red together with the named view that appears in the decoration.....' . The red 221 pattern number is what appears on this coffee can, making it an extremely rare documentary piece. The paste is the early glassy version with great translucency.

The style of painting is close to work by J.Cutts.
The pattern is also extremely close to Minton's pattern N58 of the same period, but most of their pieces will be marked, and the paste is very different.

 

The mark on the base

This rarity will be available in our 2011 Exhibition
has been SOLD

Cantonese Baroque Splendor

A local find, this Cantonese enamel ewer was a little battered, but very exciting. I could remember seeing a similar example in the V&A Museum, London, way back in my student days, when I used to spend every spare moment wandering it's labyrinth of treasures.

It is a wonderful piece of Baroque style, shaped like a Roman soldiers helmet, with a scallop shell form to the base. This style was popular in the first few decades of the 18th century, suggesting a very early date for this piece.

Cantonese enamels are a vibrant production from the region of Canton, China. The earliest examples we see date to the reign of Kanxi, in the early 18th century. This ewer would therefore be a very early example of the type: most pieces we see are well into the 19th century, and it is still being created in much the same style today.

The usual pieces are simple cups, or boxes, or dishes. This form is pure European, most probably copied from a Portuguese metal example of the late 17th century. It was intended entirely as an export piece, to be sent back to Europe as a vibrant alternate to porcelain (examples of this shape exist in Chinese Export porcelain also). In Europe, it would have been paired with a shell shaped basin, and was intended to be used in the washing of your hands.

The enamels are stunning in their vibrancy, somehow being brighter in effect than a porcelain example. The brilliant white tin oxide ground on the copper body reflects light with an absolute clarity that porcelain cannot achieve.
As is the nature of enamels, there were numerous losses to this piece: it is after all a thin layer of glass on metal, and very vulnerable to knocks and pressure. Our restorer did a wonderful job bringing this rarity back to life.
Cataloguing it was quite a task, not having access to the V&A to verify my memory, and not being able to find a comparable example in a book.
Then today I had my "Eureka" moment:

In a 1997 King Street Christies sale, titled The China Trade, a very similar example with it's basin was sold..... Look at that estimate. Quite a rarity indeed!
Being able to identify this rarity shows that spending excessive amounts of time in museums such as the Victoria & Albert, South Kensington, is well worth while, for me it was 10 years later that I put my observations to use.

The ewer is part of our 2011 Exhibition currently being prepared for an April opening.

Persian surprise

An interesting vase has been sitting on the shelf for a few months, awaiting cataloguing. I believed it to be early, perhaps 17th century, but as I began to research it today, I discovered I was out by several centuries.

Above: the Mamluk vase, with a later Persian piece behind, and a Hispano-Moresque dish to the side.

The jar is made from the distinctive 'fritware', a sandy, gritty body which must be potted thickly in order to have any strength. It is a soft body, easily broken, and so a rare survivor in the ceramics world.
The decoration is remarkable. At first it appears Chinese, as suggested by the previous owner. The 15th century AD saw the emergence of the trade route between the Middle East and Ming dynasty China, and along the route came Ming Porcelain. Highly valued, it was much admired by the various middle eastern kingdoms, and copied by potters in both shape and decoration. However, lacking the knowledge of porcelain making, they re- created it in their local traditional ceramic bodies.
The early pieces were close copies, with oriental pavilions and figures: by the mid 15th century, Islamic influences were included in the decoration.

Examining my example, there are definite Islamic motifs; the bird is middle eastern in style, and the other panel illustrated below is an urn of flowers (or a tree?) often found in textiles from the region.

And yet, the overall effect is still Chinese Ming dynasty in style; the frieze of scrolling foliage below, for example, and the lattice borders with flowerhead reserves are straight off a Chinese porcelain piece.

It's the base that illustrates so dramatically the difference to anything Chinese. The massively thick body, basically sand fused together and held in place by the thick glassy glaze. You would expect this to be rather heavy if it was a typical pottery or porcelain, but because of the loose nature of the body, it is lightweight for it's size. And very vulnerable: there is a hole right through the side, probably caused by a simple knock against a wall.

To date it, I turned to the fantastic Tafeq Rajab collection in Kuwait, published ina lavishly illustrated catalogue, illustrated below.

Item 315 is a jar, blue & white, Syria, Mamluk period, 15th century AD. Size is 26.5 cm, the same as mine, and in the text it suggests an early 15th century date due to the faithful Chinese style decoration; later in the 15th century, they note the introduction of local designs, and this is where our vase fits: later 15th century.
Exact place of manufacture is yet unknown, but thought to be around the Damascus region, an area controlled by the Mamluk Sultanate, (1250-1517).

One side has not fired well, and has ended up vey blurred, probably from too much heat in the kiln. This has created a dreamy abstract side, very modern looking, despite being over 500 years old!

This item will be released for sale in our 2011 exhibition.

Well & truly clobbered!

I've accumulated some lovely examples of Chinese porcelain which have been either enhanced or ruined, depending on your viewpoint: they began life as simple blue & white pieces, but were not "pretty" enough for the Europeans who were buying them - so the Europeans painted and gilded over the top, a process sometimes called clobbering. Clobbered pieces are despised by the purist oriental collector, but keenly sought after by a growing group of interested collectors.
In our collection, I have just catalogued an example which illustrates the process beautifully.

The piece is a 'slop' bowl in a European context, or a rice bowl in an Oriental. The Chinese original was produced during the reign of Kanxi, in the early 18th century; the European decoration was almost certainly done in Holland in the 1720-40 period.
It has the appearance and colours on a Japanese Imari piece, complete with chrysanthemum head mons- an effect the European painter was striving for.

But under the colours, you will see the original design: a series of leaves and plants in deep underglaze blue.

The peach colored panels are very unusual. They have a scraffito, or scratched in design of scrolling leaves, which is further enhanced with gilt lines.

The reason we can tell the original as opposed to the later decoration is the glaze: the original is the blue beneath the glaze, while all the European decoration is on top of the glaze. This decoration has unfortunately not bonded with the glaze too well, and in the above pic you can see the onglaze blue just beginning to flake off.

In the above photo, the blue has completely peeled off the glaze, leaving the underglaze blue leaf visible.

The best book on the subject is a recent publication by Helen Espir, "European decoration on Oriental porcelain 1700-1830".
Interestingly, the peach scraffito ground with gilt detailing doesn't appear in the many illustrated examples.

A dated English delft tea canister

It is always a thrill to identify an item which was previously a mystery. This tea canister, or tea caddy as they are often called, was a recent purchase, and is made from tin glaze earthenware, decorated in manganese. What is really exciting is the inscription on the base: "BB 1757".

I had a hunch it was English delft (always spelt lower case) as opposed to the more usual Delft (upper case) from Holland. Opening the book 'Dated English delftware' (Lipski & Archer 1984) proved my hunch- the same shape, painted in blue with a very similar pattern, is item 1528, and is dated 1774, while another very similar (1525) is dated 1763. Earlier pieces of the same shape are also recorded, beginning with 1707 and 1737. Our example is therefore dated to the middle of this type's long popularity.

Construction is very interesting, being lopsided, bowed, and with very sharp corners. Slabs of clay have been carefully assembled, a very tricky task. The shape is copying silver & pewter forms, and is most unsuited to clay: a wheel turned cylinder is the easiest and more popular form.

None illustrated have a lid, which being small and fragile most probably broke very early on. Ours has a well made tin replacement, constructed most probably by a traveling tinker who went door to door repairing such things.

You may notice the bright red mark to the underside: this has been applied to disguise and old price, which quite clearly says $1.00!!! I certainly did not pay that; as a dated piece, this is an absolute rarity, and despite a replacement lid and crack, will be one of the prime pieces in our 2011 exhibition.