Staffordshire Figures 1780-1840
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Pearlware Staffordshire figures... or not?

2/28/2016

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Staffordshire figures of Jobson and Nell, yet again. Surely you yawn as you glance down at the pearlware pair below. Have we not beaten this topic to death? But hold on just a moment. Just this past week, a pair of these figures turned my thinking upside down.
staffordshire figure, pearlware figure, Jobson, Nell, cobbler, Myrna Schkolne, Tournay, Tournai, antique Staffordshire figure, creamware figure
To recap, Staffordshire figures of Jobson and Nell, a scrawny cobble and his far-from-beautiful wife, can often be quite deadly dull and are far from attractive. The pair above, formerly in Andrew Dando's stock, is an exception. They are absolutely charming, and I used them to tell the Jobson and Nell story in a previous blog that you can read by clicking here.

This week, a pair of typical Jobson and Nell figures appeared on eBay--see below. They are incredibly close in appearance to the pair above, but they are "in the white." In other words, pretty enamel colors were not painted on top of the glaze. We see this sometimes with early Staffordshire figures. No big deal.
The figure appear in every detail to be English pearlware made in the early decades of the nineteenth century....but there is one troubling detail: both are impressed beneath TOURNAY.

I was puzzled by this mark, and posted the eBay listing to mystaffordshirefigures' FaceBook page to see what others thought. Here I learned that the Tournai factory in Belgium, which is best known for its porcelain, also made creamware from 1800 and used the impressed TOURNAY mark. Figures were apparently included in the production, and from this we are led to conclude that this pair of Jobson and Nell are Belgian rather than English.  

But I am left with some niggling doubts that I share with you:
  • Are these figures creamware (a body Tournai manufactured) or are they pearlware? They really look like pearlware to me....and Tournai did not, best I know, make pearlware figures. (Electric lighting can make the whitest object appear yellow, but look in recessed areas to best detect puddle blue-tinged glaze).
  • Jobson and Nell are characters from the English stage. Why would a Belgian manufacture want to make these? They are far from beautiful, so their commercial appeal had to be limited. And they had no relevance to their continental customers. 
  • Is it possible that Tournai (which is said to have exported pottery dinnerware in typical English patterns to England) also made Jobson and Nell figures to export to Britain? Yes, it is--but that truly would have been sending coals to Newcastle! How could these unpainted figures compete on the English market with the many colorful models that the Staffordshire potters were turning out.
  • If Tournai made creamware figures, where are the others?  I can find no examples in the numerous museum collections that are online. The only other marked Tournai figures I find are identical to the eBay pair. You can see them here....and note the price!! http://www.ac-antique.com/product_info.php?currency=USD&cPath=22&products_id=373&pID=373&language=en&osCsid=c30bf90b4010606800f6b212b4623afc

So there it is, and make of it what you will. If you can shed any light, please add your comment below. Also, please join mystaffordshirefigures on FaceBook-- clicking here should take you to this  non-exclusive group:). Interesting things come up all the time, posted by the 100+ "friends" of the group, and it is fun to see and learn. 
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Staffordshire Figure Circa ?

2/14/2016

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Dating an early pearlware figure is not simple. Admittedly, a maker's mark can be very helpful  on a Staffordshire figure. Because the figures below bear the mark of Ralph Wood, who worked from around 1782 until his death in 1796, we can date these figures in this narrow time frame. These and other marked figures of this period allows us to draw conclusions that guide in dating unmarked figures made before 1800.
Staffordshire figure, pearlware figure, Staffordshire pottery figure, Pratt ware, under glaze, Ralph Wood, Myrna Schkolne, Flemish Music


Particularly noteworthy are the soft enamel colors on early figures. Absent are the harsher greens that came about after 1800 when chromium (discovered in 1797) was introduced into the enamel palette. 

While the earliest (1780-1800) figures are quite easy to tell apart, so are the latest ones. The "cheap and cheerful" little figures made for the lower end of the market seem to fall quite happily in the 1820-1835 period
Staffordshire figure, pearlware figure, bocage figure, Staffordshire pottery figure, Pratt ware, under glaze, Ralph Wood, Myrna Schkolne, Flemish Music
But figures made in the inbetween years are more difficult to date. Was the exquisite pair of gardeners below made in 1815, 1825, or even 1835?  I really don't know. We can't assume that there was a general decline in quality over the years because I have seen fine figures that I can date with precision into the 1830s.
Staffordshire figure, pearlware figure, Staffordshire pottery figure, Pratt ware, under glaze, Ralph Wood, Myrna Schkolne, bocage figure, gardener
Staffordshire figure, pearlware figure, Staffordshire pottery figure, Pratt ware, under glaze,  Myrna Schkolne, bocage figure, gardener
Unlike the Ralph Wood figures, not all marked figures are that easy to date. The most frequently found mark is that of John Walton....but, believe it or not, we are clueless as to the time period over which Walton worked. It is thought he may have potted from as early as 1806 (but that is far from certain) until around 1835. 
Staffordshire figure, pearlware figure, Staffordshire pottery figure, Pratt ware, under glaze, Ralph Wood, Myrna Schkolne, bocage figure, Walton, Spring


I tend to think the marked figure of Spring on the left is an earlier Walton figure. There is a refinement about it that I associate with the earliest figures, but perhaps this is a leap of faith on my part.

Staffordshire figure, pearlware figure, Staffordshire pottery figure, Pratt ware, under glaze, Ralph Wood, Myrna Schkolne, bocage figure, Tenderness, John Walton, Walton Staffordshire figure

Alongside is the only marked Walton figure that I can date with any precision. The pugilists Spring and Langan fought in 1824, so this figure group was made around that year. But it doesn't give a single clue to help date other figures. And again, it is particularly refined. If it were not linked to a datable event, I might have been tempted to stick an earlier date on  it!



TENDERNESS, again marked Walton, could have been made in 1815 or 1830. Figures on the Tenderness theme were made from the 1700s (examples can be definitely attributed to Ralph Wood) until much later--probably into the 1830s.
Picture
When a figure portrays a real event, we can date the figure with some precision. Thus, figures associated with the Red Barn Murder could not have been made in 1820 because the murder occurred in 1827. For this reason, I was ecstatic many years ago to unearth the story of the tragic events in 1834, when a lion and tiger escaped from Wombwell's menagerie and killed four people. That information helped me date the figures shown below to pretty close to 1834. As you look at the figures--one titled MENAGERIE--it makes perfect sense! As the sole news account of the event tells, the victims included a mother with a child. And, as the figures teach us, one of the victims was a black man.

Till now, we have been looking at the vexing problems of dating enamel-painted figures--all painted on top of the glaze in a wide range of colors. Let's turn for a moment to talk about figures that are decorated UNDER the glaze. Their color palette is very limited and it is generally thought that this mode of decorating was displaced over the years by pretty enamels.
Staffordshire figure, pearlware figure, Staffordshire pottery figure, Pratt ware, under glaze, Ralph Wood, Myrna Schkolne, tiger with negro black man, Wombwell's menagerie, underglaze, Pratt ware figure

An under glaze figure will generally be dated between 1790 and 1820.  After that, under-glaze decorating is thought to have gone away.  ​The pretty pair alongside is courtesy of John Howard's archive.

Given the prevailing wisdom (or lack thereof) on dating under-glaze figures, it is not surprising that Jonathan Horne dated the under-glaze figure below of a tiger to circa 1800 when he included in in one of his much-awaited exhibitions in the early 1980s. But we now know that the figure must have been made circa 1834, at the time of the menagerie deaths. 
Picture
You may have noticed that the tiger and man come from the same/very similar figure molds as the large enamel-painted tiger shown in the slideshow above (that figure is in the Potteries Museum).  
Staffordshire figure, pearlware figure, Staffordshire pottery figure, Pratt ware, under glaze, Ralph Wood, Myrna Schkolne, bocage figure, gardener

​And to hammer home my point yet again, here is another under-glaze colored figure on the very same 1834 theme.

I could go on to reinforce this point, but it is enough for one day. Next time you see a lovely underglaze figure, don't let the primitive nature of its coloring delude you into thinking it predates similar enamel-painted figures. As we now know, for a long time, these techniques co-existed, and contributed to the richness and variety we all enjoy in our collections today.
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    Myrna Schkolne, antique Staffordshire pottery, expert
    antique Staffordshire pottery, Staffordshire figure, bocage, antique Staffordshire, Myrna Schkolne
    Staffordshire figure, Myrna Schkolne, pearlware figure, creamware, bocage figure, antique Staffordshire pottery
    Staffordshire figure, Myrna Schkolne, pearlware figure, creamware, bocage figure, antique Staffordshire pottery
    Staffordshire figure, Myrna Schkolne, pearlware figure, creamware, bocage figure, antique Staffordshire pottery
    Staffordshire figure, Myrna Schkolne, pearlware figure, creamware, bocage figure, antique Staffordshire pottery
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    antique Staffordshire pottery, Staffordshire figure, bocage, antique Staffordshire, Myrna Schkolne
    antique Staffordshire pottery, Staffordshire figure, bocage, antique Staffordshire, Myrna Schkolne
    antique Staffordshire pottery, Staffordshire figure, Ralph Wood, antique Staffordshire, Myrna Schkolne
    antique Staffordshire pottery, Staffordshire figure, Obadiah Sherratt, antique Staffordshire, Myrna Schkolne

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