What do these three figures of gentlemen have in common? A hint: you don't have to know anything about Staffordshire figures to get the answer.
Sir Anthony van Dyck. Courtesy Dallas Auction Galleries.
William Shakespeare. Courtesy Andrew Dando.
Robinson Crusoe. Courtesy Andrew Dando.
Well, as you've probably deduced, the figures all have facial hair. Robin Crusoe, the third figure, of course couldn't shave while marooned on his dessert island, so a beard and moustache seem appropriate here. And we expect William Shakespeare and Sir Anthony van Dyck to have facial hair because in their centuries, facial hair was fashionable and suggestive of virility and masculinity.
Pearlware figures with beards or moustaches generally depict gentlemen from bygone centuries, but figures portraying everyday people of the early 1800s don't have facial hair. The reason is that from the 1700s till about 1850, facial hair was a no-no. A clean-shaven "open" face symbolized an open mind----the quintessential ingredient for an enlightened gentleman. The invention of cast steel in the mid-1700s vastly improved razor blades, and new shaving gear prolipherated--all of which made shaving easier. And of course Georgian gentlemen were very into pampering themselves--remember the dandies of that era?
Among the tens of thousands of Staffordshire figures of everyday folk that I have examined, I can recall but two portraying men with facial hair. Both were made by the "Sherratt" pot bank and both have moustaches!
Pearlware figures with beards or moustaches generally depict gentlemen from bygone centuries, but figures portraying everyday people of the early 1800s don't have facial hair. The reason is that from the 1700s till about 1850, facial hair was a no-no. A clean-shaven "open" face symbolized an open mind----the quintessential ingredient for an enlightened gentleman. The invention of cast steel in the mid-1700s vastly improved razor blades, and new shaving gear prolipherated--all of which made shaving easier. And of course Georgian gentlemen were very into pampering themselves--remember the dandies of that era?
Among the tens of thousands of Staffordshire figures of everyday folk that I have examined, I can recall but two portraying men with facial hair. Both were made by the "Sherratt" pot bank and both have moustaches!
I have seen both these figures without mustaches, so I think that a painter was simply having some fun! Of course, things sometimes went wrong in painting, as we see from the Walton cherub with eyelashes above her eye brows
or this bawdy bar maid with her lips painted onto the middle of her chin,
Louis Colon, born 1827, with an 11 foot beard that holds his cat! but I think the moustaches on the two little "Sherratt" figures were some long-dead painter's idea of fun. He must have smiled as he completed each stroke, and I smile today as I look at them. How wonderful when humor crosses the centuries!
As for facial hair, it rebounded into fashion in full swing in the second half of the nineteenth century. This gives me comfort. Surely the taste for minimalistic interiors too will die, and antiques will come back into vogue!
As for facial hair, it rebounded into fashion in full swing in the second half of the nineteenth century. This gives me comfort. Surely the taste for minimalistic interiors too will die, and antiques will come back into vogue!
