Creamware Covered Jug and Cover With Orange Foliate Scroll Designs

Details

Description

English Creamware Covered Jug, Orange Foliate Scroll Decoration, Strainer Spout
English, Staffordshire or Yorkshire, Circa 1820

This English creamware covered … Read more English Creamware Covered Jug, Orange Foliate Scroll Decoration, Strainer Spout
English, Staffordshire or Yorkshire, Circa 1820

This English creamware covered jug is painted around the shoulder with a running band of scrolling foliage in a bold orange enamel, each stem outlined in black and throwing off feathered acanthus leaves and rounded buds between a pair of orange lines.

The ovoid body rises from a plain turned foot encircled by a single orange line, narrowing to a short neck with a broad pinched pouring lip whose edge is picked out in orange. A plain loop strap handle, lined in orange down its outer face, springs from the neck and finishes in a tail against the body; where it meets the shoulder the painter has carried a feathered leaf out of the border and onto the upper terminal. The domed cover repeats the scrolling band en suite between orange lines, with a plain reserve within an orange circle at the crown and a bead knop banded and capped in orange. The interior is fitted with a pierced strainer behind the lip, and the cover is cut with a crescent aperture for a ladle.

A small covered jug of this kind reads well on a dining table or sideboard, on a kitchen shelf against painted wood, or grouped with other creamware where the single band of orange supplies the only color. It holds a short arrangement of garden flowers comfortably.

Dimensions:
Height: 6 1/2 inches (16.5 cm)
Width: 6 inches (15.2 cm) across the handle
Depth: 4 inches (10.2 cm)

Marks:
Unmarked.

Provenance:
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition:
Good antique condition, retaining its original cover, which is undamaged. The enamels are bright and well preserved, with light surface scratching and faint staining to the body consistent with age and use.

Historical Context:
Creamware, the fine cream-colored earthenware under a clear lead glaze developed by the Staffordshire potters in the 1750s and improved by Josiah Wedgwood, who named his version Queen's Ware following Queen Charlotte's patronage in 1765, remained the standard useful ware of the English table well into the nineteenth century and was made across both Staffordshire and Yorkshire. By the Regency its painted decoration had moved away from the sparse neoclassical borders of the 1780s toward broader, stronger enamel patterns of this kind, in which a single bold color carries the whole design.

The combination of a strainer set behind the lip and a cover cut for a ladle suggests a jug intended for a liquid carrying solids that had to be held back in pouring, whether a sauce or a warm spiced drink such as punch or posset.

(Ref: NY08375-B-nrr) See less