Early Staffordshire pottery figures do not come with a maker's mark and date on them, so dated design sources are invaluable in guiding the dating of our figures. Behind every early Staffordshire figures there is an idea, a thought, something that made it happen....and finding out what that is and when it happened adds immeasurably to my knowledge base. The pearlware figure group known as Perswaition  ​is a case in point. 

As I have said previously, such pearlware figure groups were long thought to have been inspired by Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, published in 1818. Now we know that a print titled "Persuasion" and dated 1809 is clearly the figure's design source. This is important because it means that Perswaition groups were not made before 1809. They can, theoretically date to as early as 1809, but  I think most of them were made from 1815.

The print above titled Persuasion and dated 1809 is applied to glass and painted from the back, a technique that makes for rich colors akin to those found in stained glass. Every collector who has a pearlware Perswaition should own this print, and every time I have found one, I have matched it with a collector who wants it.

Just this week, I came across a far humbler version of the Persuasion print. This one, seen below, is tiny cottage print. Undated, it measures only 7 inches by 4 inches. It was printed on cheap paper and hand-colored quickly and simply, and it is amazing that it has survived. Clearly, the figures are the same, and once again that ambitious flower is alongside the lady. 

You will notice that both these prints are titled Persuasion, yet the figure group is referred to as Perswaition. That comes about because some examples of the figure group are actually  titled Perswaition, as you see below. 

The title PERSWAITION is on the little yellow tablet to the right of the base. All Perswaition groups were made by a pot bank dubbed the "Patriotic Group" pot bank. It alone titled groups in this manner. Notice that the bocages of both groups shown here are "pine cone" bocages. Only the "Patriotic Group" pot bank used this bocage form.

Perswaition groups are both impressive and beautiful. They have a sizable footprint, a good three-dimensionality. I think that Perswaition groups were made over an extended period of time. Their quality can vary. Some, like those shown here are quite finely potted, but others seem "chunkier." They are found with various bocage forms, and the base sometimes has little feet on it. With all these variations, there is a lot for a collector to choose from....but try to find all the features on your wish list in one figure group!! In my case, I wanted fine quality and just the right expression on the lady's face. That mattered more to me than a title on the base. It took me almost twenty years to acquire the group we own!

Do you know what St. Monday is? "Keeping St. Monday" was said to justify staying away from work in bygone centuries to recover  from Sunday's drinking binges. (Remember in those times, days marking particular saints were holidays.) Sunday drinking was a problem in the Potteries of Staffordshire, so I guess that on hang-over-Mondays a few things went wrong....and so we come to the title Perswaition group on Aurea Carter's site, which seems to have been fired and painted on a Monday. 

The quality of the pot seems lovely, but something apparently went wrong in the kiln, and the bocage was broken.

To top it, the painter did a half-job on the dress pattern and then simply threw in the towel when it came to painting the back. Oh dear! Yet this figure group has been lovingly passed down from generation to generation for two hundred years, and rightly so.

The longer I collect, the more tolerant I am of damage. It is part of life. The Japanese technique of kintsukuroi repairs pottery with lacquer dusted with gold or silver or platinum. The repair is not hidden. Rather, it is highlighted. The philosophy behind this technique is that the imperfection is integral to the piece's history and should be celebrated as such. The thinking is that something that has history becomes even more beautiful when it suffers damage. Alas, when it comes to early English pottery figures, we think quite differently, but perhaps we should also learn to an embrace the damage in our own collections.   

Last week, a little pair of Staffordshire figures that Martyn Edgell has in stock appeared somewhere in the bowels of FaceBook. I know many of you shudder at the mere  mention of FaceBook, and I sympathize. I admit to scrolling through my feed each day to check for figures and pictures of my children, but beyond that, I really don't care. The average user, I believe, spends 50 minutes a day on FaceBook. I can tolerate a mere 5!

​Here are Martyn's, figures. They are charming pearlware deer. A pretty bocage pair, and a true pair--quite hard to find these days.

No sooner had these figures made their debut on FaceBook than a user questioned whether they were a true pair becaue their bases are not painted identically. Yes, yes, yes, they are a true pair, and  I don't think they could be truer. There is a little more brown on one base than the other, but the bocages match as do the deer themselves. It is common to see this sort of mismatch in figures that are true pairs.

The pair below is a very true pair. Notice that her base is far yellower than his. 

And the two figures below are a true pair, but his base and tree trunk are very much browner than hers.

Let's stop and remember that these figures were painted by hand, and that alone can account for the differences. In each instance shown here, it is possible that one painter painted both figures--or perhaps they were painted by two different individuals.

Add to this, we really don't know how figures were sold. Were they sold in pairs, or could you choose whether you wanted to buy a single or a pair? I suspect that many figures that we today think of as pairs were available for purchase individually.

I have two pairs of Neale tambourine player-piper figures in my collection. I don't normally duplicate, but in this instance I simply can't decide which pair to part with. 

This is the pair in the Potteries Museum

Here we have a pair that sold many, many moons ago at Christie's.

These figures, all made in the 1780s, are rare, and I can't track any other pairs in my archive. Their enamels are so very pretty and silky. Quite my favorite. Note that in each and every case, the bases do not match. Should I conclude that the figures were made for sale as individual figures? I am not quite sure. Notice that in most cases the clothing colors are harmonious, leading me to think that the figures were painted to stand side by side. Did the bases simply not matter? We will never know!

Even though I have yet to find a pair of Neale musicians with bases that match exactly, I can't dismiss the possibility that they were made as true matches but over the years they have been repaired to give what we see here. (Full disclosure: the first Neale pair shown here was bought as a pair; the second was bought as individual figures.) The more I think about all this, the further away from resolution I get!

As for FaceBook, consider joining the mystaffordshirefigures group, which boasts over 100 people--surely the tiniest FaceBook group! Interesting things come up, and postings are few and far between, so five minutes a week should be all that is required to keep abreast of what's going on.