The Leeds Pottery, based in Yorkshire, is renowned for the creamware useful wares that it produced from the later eighteenth century. But it also potted figures in both pearlware and creamware that have distinctive facial features. I was excited to spot two figures with those very facial features in a mixed lot that came to auction recently. With the help of a collector friend, I was able to procure just these two six-inch beauties out of the lot.
The figures represent the seasons Autumn and Summer. I know of such figures only from the photograph below of a full set of Season, taken from Peter Walton's Creamware and Other English Pottery at Temple Newsam, Leeds.
My little Leeds couple are almost as pretty from the back.
Although I would bet they have been together always, their bases were finished differently beneath, and the one is impressed LEEDS POTTERY, while the other is not.
The detail in the modeling is impressive. Look at the fruit in her basket and those teeny grapes in her outstretched hand. (Please overlook the dirt!)
Also note the folds in his clothing and the wheat in his hand.
And, to top it, those typical Leeds faces are sweetly painted.
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To my mind, the consistency of the glaze and enamels makes these figures especially delicious. There is a silkiness to them, and the enamels have melded softly with the glaze. Nothing brash, harsh, and glassy here. Rather, the feel is very like that of the Neale figures of the early 1780s, and I suspect that these Leeds figures are also rather early.
Speaking of Neale Seasons, I have long wanted to own a set of Neale Seasons with the Neale mark. I think that the marked examples predate the closely similar unmarked ones by a little bit, and their quality always seems finer. I suspect the only way to get a complete set is to assemble it, so I got started by acquiring the marked examples of Winter and Spring, below Are they not superb? Why do collectors and dealer overlook such tiny gems but eagerly pursue splashier figures?
Speaking of Neale Seasons, I have long wanted to own a set of Neale Seasons with the Neale mark. I think that the marked examples predate the closely similar unmarked ones by a little bit, and their quality always seems finer. I suspect the only way to get a complete set is to assemble it, so I got started by acquiring the marked examples of Winter and Spring, below Are they not superb? Why do collectors and dealer overlook such tiny gems but eagerly pursue splashier figures?
Figures potraying the Seasons, are, to my mind, endlessly satifsying. They are almost all beautiful, and they are so very varied. If I was compelled to collect just one subject, the Seasons would be it!
Yet another Season came my way this year, when this 6.8" figure debuted on eBay. That comic face was, to my mind, instantly recognizable, because I had seen this lady before, in a partial set of the Seasons.
Yet another Season came my way this year, when this 6.8" figure debuted on eBay. That comic face was, to my mind, instantly recognizable, because I had seen this lady before, in a partial set of the Seasons.
Below are her three "sisters," and together the four ladies would portray all four Seasons. I don't know which pot bank made made my lady in the yellow-dress-that plunges-too-low, but the three gals below can be attributed to Ralph Wood. Among their distinctive features is the line that bands only three sides of each base. I suspect that they were made in the latter years of Ralph Wood's fairly short career and that the molds subsequently passed to another potter. Alas, it seems that time has robbed us of all but the lady in yellow, but please be on the look out for her companions!
Courtesy Byrne's Auctioneers, Chester.
Below are my recent Seasons, all looking for members of their original families. They are all fine figures, ridiculously inexpensive at that. For now, I am enjoying them on a shelf in my office, where they give me enormous pleasure.
