We live in a marvelous age! From my home in Dallas, I am fortunate to be able to keep in touch with collectors of early Staffordshire figures in the US and UK, as well as those further afield. I value the friendships forged over the years and am always excited to hear of additions to my distant collector friends' shelves. To me, the most interesting collections are those that embrace unusual figures of great merit, figures that both tantalize their owners' intellects as well as please their eyes. Just recently, a valued collector friend sent me photographs of two figures that he acquired in Portugal, of all places.
The first figure, below, portrays St. John the Baptist and is titled "S. JOAO", presumably the Portuguese equivalent of St. John. The figure is extraordinarily rare, the only other example I know of being in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (See Vol. 2 of Staffordshire Figures 1780-1840). Because John the Baptist identified Jesus as the Lamb of God, there is a lamb next to the figure.
The first figure, below, portrays St. John the Baptist and is titled "S. JOAO", presumably the Portuguese equivalent of St. John. The figure is extraordinarily rare, the only other example I know of being in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (See Vol. 2 of Staffordshire Figures 1780-1840). Because John the Baptist identified Jesus as the Lamb of God, there is a lamb next to the figure.
This figure is impressed "4" on the reverse. The example in the Fitzwilliam Museum in impressed "No. 4". Figures such as this were made by Enoch Wood for the Portuguese market in the 1820s, and this figure may well have been in Portugal for the last two hundred or so years. Other figures also numbered and styled in this manner are among the Enoch Wood shards of circa 1825 excavated from the Burslem Old Town Hall site in 1938. Several of these figures appear to once have had metal fittings. In this case, John the Baptist has a hole on the top of his head, and the accumulation of wax around it suggests it accommodated a candleholder of sorts.
As luck would have it--and I should only have such luck!--the collector who acquired John the Baptist at the same time acquired another rare figure in the same series. That figure is titled "S. MANOEL. M." (St. Emanuel Martyris) and represents the martyred St. Emanuel, as you see below.
This figure is impressed "N. 5" on the reverse. The example I show in Vol. 2 of Staffordshire Figures 1780-1840 is impressed "No. 5".
The figures or John the Baptist and St. Emanuel are both a good eight to nine inches tall. I suspect they have lived together in Portugal since the 1820s, but they have now been repatriated to the UK.
Did you notice the holes in St. Emanuel's chest, right above his nipples? There are similar holes in his ears. That's because a long-ago owner modified the figure to reflect Emanuel's martyrdom. He clearly went to great trouble to do so and had high-quality (perhaps silver) arrows made to fit in the holes. The hole in the top of Emanuel's head, on the other hand, is original and was intended to accommodate a metal object of sorts--perhaps a halo.
Did you notice the holes in St. Emanuel's chest, right above his nipples? There are similar holes in his ears. That's because a long-ago owner modified the figure to reflect Emanuel's martyrdom. He clearly went to great trouble to do so and had high-quality (perhaps silver) arrows made to fit in the holes. The hole in the top of Emanuel's head, on the other hand, is original and was intended to accommodate a metal object of sorts--perhaps a halo.
The figures Enoch Wood made for his Portuguese customers all seem to have been religious in nature, and many were numbered on the reverse. How many numbered figure models were made? I suggest that there had to have been at least 11 figures in the numbered series because the unpainted figure shown below is impressed "No. 11" on the reverse. Impressed "S. SEBASTI. O, M" (St. Sebastian Obiit Martyris) on the front, it represents the martyred St. Sebastian. Now in the Potteries Museum, it is among material excavated from the Enoch Wood site.
Courtesy The Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent,.
If the figure of St. Sebastian looks vaguely familiar to you, it is probably because St. Sebastian comes for sale relatively frequently. Too often touted as "early,"every example I have seen can be attributed to the Kent factory, which seems to have produced these figures in abundance circa 1900.
 | Alongside, is the Kent rendition of St. Sebastian. It seems to have been made from Enoch Wood molds, but the colors betray its later origin. I have not yet found an early painted example of this figure, in the flesh or in the literature. The unpainted figure in the Potteries Museum is, to date, the only early example on record. |
Also in the Potteries Museum and also known only from an unpainted figure excavated from the Enoch Wood site is the figure below of the virgin martyr St. Barbara. It is impressed "S. Barbar. V. M." (St. Barbara Virgin Martyris) on the front and "No.3" on the reverse.
Courtesy The Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent,.
Courtesy The Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent,.
Below, and again known from only this one example, is this lovely figure of St. Lucy, impressed "S. LUZIA" and "No. 9".
Courtesy Elinor Penna.
Courtesy Elinor Penna.
Yet another of the numbered figures is this Pieta, showing Mary cradling Jesus in her arms, and impressed "No. 6" behind.
Although this Pieta is untitled, but the only other recorded example, an unpainted group in the Potteries Museum, is impressed "N. S. DA PIEDADE" on the front and "No. 6" on the reverse. Seen below, notice that Jesus is missing from Mary's arms, and I suspect that this group, again excavated from the site associated with Enoch Wood, may well have been a reject.
Courtesy The Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent,.
To summarize, I show our six Enoch Wood figures in this numbered series below. Assuming there were eleven models, we are over halfway to recording them all...but the number sequence may well have run quite a bit higher. These are all impressive figures that are interesting, eye-catching, and particularly rare--in some cases, unique. It is a sad reflection on collecting tastes that most collectors would overlook them.
 No. 3. Courtesy The Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent,.  No. 5.  No. 9. Courtesy Elinor Penna. |  No. 4.  No. 6.  No. 11. Courtesy The Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent,. |
UPDATE
After posting this last month, a collector with an important collection kindly let me know that he and his wife too have a Pieta, like the figure impressed "6" above. And scouring the web revealed yet another, in the archive of Madelena, which I show below.
Image courtesy Madelena.
