Bristol Pearlware Toothbrush Box With Pierced Cover and Enamel-Painted Flowers

Details

Description

Bristol Pearlware Toothbrush Box with Pierced Cover and Enamel-Painted Flowers
Circa 1820

This Bristol pearlware toothbrush box is of elongated … Read more Bristol Pearlware Toothbrush Box with Pierced Cover and Enamel-Painted Flowers
Circa 1820

This Bristol pearlware toothbrush box is of elongated oval form, made to hold two toothbrushes side by side, with a divider running down the center of the interior. The top of the cover is pierced overall with a lattice of quatrefoil flowerheads, each a small circle ringed by four almond-shaped openings, with star-shaped openings between them. The piercing let air reach the bristles so that the brushes could dry between uses.

The sides of the cover and base are each painted in enamels with a continuous band of alternating pale blue and yellow flowers on slender stems, among leaves in two shades of green and small scrolled buds. The blue flowers are outlined and veined in purple, the yellow in brown, and reddish-brown lines finish the rims of both cover and base. Painted examples of the form are unusual.

The box is attributed to the Bristol Pottery at Temple Back during the partnership of John Decimus Pountney and Edwin Allies (1816–1835). Brown rim bands are a feature of the factory’s enamel-painted wares in the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, and a documented Pountney & Allies jug painted by William Fifield, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, carries a painted mark in purple comparable to the numeral on this base.

Of a size for a dressing table, washstand or bathroom shelf, the box also serves as a covered tray for pens or small jewelry on a desk or bedside table, and it shows well in a cabinet alongside other early English pottery.

Dimensions
Length: 7 inches (17.8 cm)
Width: 3 inches (7.6 cm)
Height: 1¾ inches (4.4 cm)

Marks
The numeral “47” painted in puce script on the underside of the base.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Historical Context
The toothbrush became an everyday article in England after William Addis began making brushes commercially in London around 1780, setting hog bristle, or badger hair on costlier brushes, into bone handles. Long divided boxes to keep them on the washstand were made across the English pottery industry by the 1820s, most often transfer-printed in blue, as by Spode.

Pearlware, the cobalt-tinted refinement of creamware that Josiah Wedgwood introduced as “Pearl White” in 1779, was made alongside creamware at the Bristol Pottery at Temple Back. Under Pountney & Allies the factory became known for bold enamel flower painting, above all by William Fifield, who described himself on a plaque of 1847, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, as the last of the Bristol china painters.

Ref: VM60387F See less