This blog may have been a little quiet in recent weeks, but I have not been idle. I have started building a website that will serve as an addendum to Staffordshire Figures 1780-1840, volumes 1-4. Seems the 4,500 or so figures portrayed in those books are not the limits of the potters' creativity. Rather, new figures keep turning up-- although not in huge numbers, will admit. The web site will allow me to update our collective knowledge base. Also, it will include color glazed and under-glaze colored figures---you will recall that these are not included in my books. For inspiration today, I looked at the folder I keep for new enamel-painted figures of musicians, and I found these that I wish I could add to the 236 already in print.
I have been aware of the whacky spill vase below for years because the picture has been in my archive for a long time. I didn't include it in my book because image quality was not adequate for publication--but it is perfectly suitable for the web. The vase is on a Patriotic Group base, and I have not hesitation attributing it to that pot bank. Particularly interesting is the lady with a tambourine standing on the left.
I have been aware of the whacky spill vase below for years because the picture has been in my archive for a long time. I didn't include it in my book because image quality was not adequate for publication--but it is perfectly suitable for the web. The vase is on a Patriotic Group base, and I have not hesitation attributing it to that pot bank. Particularly interesting is the lady with a tambourine standing on the left.
| The only small tambourine payer of this form that I have recorded is the little figure on the right, which I attribute to "Sherratt". Could "Sherratt" possibly have made the spill vase group above? No, no, no. It doesn't have a single "Sherratt" feature, and notice the three plumes on the tambourine player's hat. They are not at all like "Sherratt" plumes, which, if present, are always done with great precision. |  |
"Sherratt" liked to tuck a little tambourine player onto the end of long menagerie platforms, as you see in the drop-dead menagerie below, courtesy of the Hunt Collection.
Courtesy the William Herbert and Nancy Hunt Collection.
Also in my addendum folder is this weird remmant of a once glorious group. I have never seen a mound quite like this, and it clearly sat upon yet another base. I can't begin to imagine what it once looked like.
Also rather wonderful and unpublished is the group below. I have recorded two examples of it. Both pictures are totally inadequate for publication, but I hope to run into one or other of these groups in the future--or perhaps I will even find a third.
Another surprise find for my addendum is a Gasconian that I found lurking in an old Christie's catalogue dated 1997. According to the catalog, the figure is titled Gasconian. Strangely, this Gasconian has a bocage, something I have not seen before.
Courtesy Christie's
All other examples of the Gasconian that I have recorded have been made without a bocage and have all been attributed to Ralph Wood. You see such a figure below.
Courtesy Aurea Carter
I suspect that the Gasconian-with-bocage is also a Ralph Wood figure, but made with the addition of a bocage.....yet I wouldn't bet on it. I am cautious because Dudson acquired some Ralph Wood molds and added bocages to the very same figure forms. For example, the Ralph Wood bagpiper (left) was made by Dudson with a bocage (right).
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