English Delftware #0068

The collector: A private collector (aka Foundling), UK.

The collection: English Delftware.

The story behind the collection...

Delftware is an odd type of British pottery that was never made in Staffordshire but in the main ports. It originated in Europe but not, despite its name, in Delft. It was made in imitation of delicate Chinese porcelain but was really a heavy type of earthenware.  In many ways, it is a form of folk art despite the sophisticated chinoiserie style of decoration.  I decided to collect it when I was 17 (I still have my first plate) because I heard a pottery collector say 'Nobody wants delft these days’.  I thought that was sad and, actually liking its oddity, am now the temporary guardian of well over 100 pieces of delftware. I am younger than all of them by at least 150 years and hopefully they will all survive me.

First made in Elizabethan London, this type of pottery would have been familiar to Shakespeare as pottery made just down the road from The Globe Theatre, because in Measure for Measure he describes it as ‘ not china dishes but very good dishes’. By the early 18^th century, it had become known as ‘delf’ because the raw material was dug (delved) out of the ground and was bought by people who could not afford Chinese porcelain. When Dean Swift wanted to mock Stella’s middle class parsimony, he wrote about her serving ‘a dinner worthy of herself: two nothings on two plates of delf’. Later in the century when Josiah Wedgwood promoted his more industrially produced tableware, which chipped less easily and was decorated in the new classical style, the public responded eagerly and delftware went out of production by the early 19th century.

I like delftware for a number of reasons. Despite being produced in imitation of china, it was nevertheless distinctive because the anonymous decorators recorded their individuality in minor variations, odd quirky details or natural inventiveness. Deltware also speaks of the homes of ordinary people. They ate their dinners off delft plates or they hung them like pictures on their walls. I found out (from Georgian household inventories) that delftware was nearly always owned and used by the middle classes. It was status ware: they did not keept it in the kitchen with the wood or pewter, but  in a living room cupboard, or in the best room standing on a side-board. Apothecaries stored their preparations in rows of delftware jars and inn-keepers served up punch in delft bowls and beer in mugs. For some reason, prosperous butchers often owned quantities of the pottery. 

Of course, I like all the items in the collection but some have particular attractions:

1. Plate  (222mm diam.) London, Lambeth High Street c. 1750.

This is one of the folk-art type plates, and I like it not only because of its spirited brushwork and direct style but also because the neat sponged border was smudged on either side by the decorator. The plate itself records how it was handled by a long dead inhabitant of South London.

2. Apothecary pot 50 mm high, 44mm diam. London, c.1750.

A Mr Sharp was an apothecary in mid 18^th century Bishopsgate, London. He would have sold medicinal or perfumed ointment in this now battered little pot. I like it for several reasons. With its rim shaped so that parchment could be tied over it, the pot is purely functional. A small paper label underneath says that it used to belong to Celia Hemming, a well-known collector of delft, and I like to think of it being passed from collector to collector. And my wife went down to London especially to buy this for me as a Christmas present some 30 years ago. 

3. Small bowl decorated upside down (168 mm diam) London, Bristol or Liverpool, mid 18^th century.

What appears to be an oddity is explained by two Georgian social habits. Bowls were often stored upside down on shelves or in cupboards (the final scene in Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode shows just such an arrangement). The pattern would thus be visible when on display but obscured by hands when in use because this small bowl was used for drinking. Joseph Highmore’s painting of ‘Mr Oldham and his Guests’ (Tate Britain) shows a man holding a blue and white drinking bowl. So this bowl puts us directly in touch with how people did normal everyday things but in a different way from ourselves.

4.Large dish (333 mm diam.), Dublin (John Chambers), late 1730s.

This dish is really special because it represents two of my discoveries. I had it for 30 years before I found out from its glaze, shape and manufacture that it was made by the Dublin pottery, the products of which are far less known and smaller in number than those of English delftware potteries. Even more unusually, I have been able to find out where the pattern came from and how it was used. I found an original 1735 print that corresponds exactly with the decoration on this dish, but only in certain parts. By laying a clear acetate photo-copy of the print on the dish, I was able to show that the decorator must have cut up an identical print to make the rectangular design fit the round dish, and then ‘pounced’ the design onto the dish. This was a standard procedure used by plate and tile decorators: they would prick holes in the paper along the outline of a design, lay the paper on the item to be decorated, gently dab finely ground charcoal through the holes and remove the paper leaving guidelines for applying brush decoration. It was amusing to find that this decorator worked confidently where there were pounced outlines adding flourishes or extending the design  to fill open spaces, but where decoration had to be invented (notably in the foreground grass) he or she fell back on mechanical repetitive marks. I find it fascinating that this dish and the print together provided evidence of how 18th century delftware decorators worked within and, when forced, beyond their creative limits.

5. Plate (234 mm. diam), probably London, 1750s. 

Apart from being blue and white, this type of plate, well known to delftware collectors, is decidedly western in character. Older writers got a bit pompous about this style of decoration relating it to contemporaneous English water-colour painting whilst condescendingly commenting on its naivety. On the contrary, I think this plate shows high sensitivity and sophistication in the way the circular plate, horizontal ground line and the vertical tree both contrast and fit in with each other. It should be noted that the unfired white or pale blue glaze on which delftware decorators had to work was dry and powdery. Mistakes could not be rectified or removed and this encouraged brisk and decisive brushwork. The almost calligraphic dexterity shown on this plate suggests that the decorator, far from imitating ‘higher art’, had developed a strong sense of design acquired through years of such work.

6. Plate, 222 mm diam. Possibly Bristol, 1750s or 60s.

Most of my delftware is restrained blue and white, because it has survived in much larger quantities than coloured wares and so is now less expensive. When delft potters used other colours their choices could be garish, as in the plate. The bizarre pattern is probably the work of several decorators - one doing outlines and infill in red, another adding blue or green and so on, none of them paying much attention to how their work related to what the others were doing. Whatever, I like this plate because it shows that our elegant Georgian ancestors could be as brash and tasteless as anyone else. 

7. Baluster shaped jug (132mm h. x 50mm diameter top) London, Mortlake or Vauxhall Pottery, about 1820.

This is one of my favourite pieces in part because it is the youngest in the collection. It was made when the market for fashionable delftware had vanished and the potteries produced utilitarian wares to keep in business. Imitating imported German stoneware versions, this jug was probably made for grocers to sell  table sauce or oil. It is also technically interesting - the earthenware glaze covers a stoneware body. But my main reason for liking it is one that every collector recognises - the stall holder from whom I bought it in an antique market had no idea what it was, and she only asked £6 for it.  

7. Apothecary's drug jar (175mm h. & 93mm foot and top diam.), London, 1680s.

And this one is the oldest in the collection. Apothecaries had rows of such named jars on their shelves, partly as functional storage and partly as an advert for their skills. This jar contained ‘conserva malvae’, a product of althea officinalis (or mallow) which was used as a poultice. The conserve would have been protected from dust with a parchment stretched over the top of the jar and tied down with string. Not having parchment to hand, I use brown paper to keep the dust out of the empty jar.  It is not known why drug jars of this period are decorated with stylised angels., but it may be in reference to The Archangel Raphael who was a patron saint of apothecaries.

This is a slice of the collection – running out of space…..

……and this is me, hiding behind a delft dish of about 1730, and probably made in Bristol. I like this dish because I have known it all my life. As a child, I thought it was nice but only discovered it was delft years later …and I only recently found out that it is English and not Dutch – even better!

All images © of the collector and used with his kind permission.

Comments

[Victor Judge]

A very nice collection of delft,thank you for sharing it.

I have a coupl of pieces that match the colour tone and pencil like decoration of your Dublin 'John Chambers' piece.

Unusually they are marked on the reverse with what you could be forgiven for thinking was the Dutch Delft Claw factory mark.

I was not aware that they were in fact from Dublin and thought that they were perhaps from Liverpool.

Are you able to advise how they are attributed to Dublin,to further my own knowledge ?

Regards

Vic