Basin: C.15-2024

Maker(s)

Potter: Unknown

Entities

• Basin

Categories

• Tin-glazed earthenware
• English delftware

Description

Tin-glazed-earthenware, moulded, and painted in blue and yellow. The bowl is of lobed form with a scalloped rim and deep, curved sides, standing on a low foot of which about half has been chipped away. It is decorated with a central medallion enclosing the initials of a man and wife, R/W: A:/1617' surrounded by a broad yellow circle between two blue circles. Radiating from this there are twelve panels edged with yellow extending to the rim, decorated alternately with a plant motif partly reserved in a blue ground, and two wavy W-like motifs one above the other on a white ground.

Notes

History note: Sold by Simon Westman and Jonathan Horne, date unknown (label affixed to the underside of the dish); private UK collector; from whom purchased by the vendor, Kevin Morris.

Legal notes

Bought with the Perceval Fund, 2024

Place(s) associated

• London ⪼ England

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bought (2024) by Kevin UK Delftware

Dating

17th Century, Early
James I
Production date: dated AD 1617 : Further investigation of excavated material from Montague Close and Pickleherring required, and if possible more information about the provenance of this piece is desirable.

Note

This bowl is one of the earliest dated examples of English delftware, and might have been made in one of three London potteries, many of whose staff were immigrants from the Low Countries. The first London tin-glazed earthenware pottery at Aldgate operated from about 1570 until about 1615. It seems more likely that this bowl could have been made at Montague Close in Southwark which was founded by two merchants, Edmund Bradshawe and Nicholas Mawley, who obtained a lease on a property there in 1612. Bradshawe in partnership with another merchant, Hugh Cressey, applied for and obtained a monopoly of the manufacture of 'earthenware as used in Fiansa and ... beyond the seas' on 24 July 1613. The products were to include 'paving tiles of all sises, dishes of all sises, pott of all sizes' for twenty-one years. Another pot house was founded at Pickleherring in Southwark by Christian Wilhelm, who had come from the Netherlands in 1604., and at first manufactured smalt, a cobalt-blue colouring. He was probably running a pottery by c. 1612-13 as in 1628, when he was granted a 21 year monopoly to make 'Galliware' (a term for imported tin-glazed wares) of all kinds', he stated that he had been doing do so for sixteen years. This bowl resembles, but not exactly, the deep fluted and lobed white maiolica basins and shallower deep dishes which were made in Faenza in Italy in the late sixteenth century. 'Bianchi da Faenza' - Faena white wares - were famed for the high quality and whiteness of their glaze from the mid 16th century and were later imitated in the Low Countries and elsewhere. They were decorated mainly in blue, yellow, and orange, with borders and central motifs such as medallions enclosing figures, painted in a summary or sketchy style, known as 'a compendiario'. Many of the large basins and shallower dishes had radiating or crossing ribbon patterns with blue designs akin to embroidery, described as 'a ricamo'. The design on this English dish was probably based on a Faenza bowl of that type (see C. ). The popularity of white wares with blue decoration was ultimately derived from imported Chinese blue and white porcelain, which had been collected by wealthy Italians such as the Medici family, since the 15th century, and entered western Europe in increasing quantities after the founding of the English and Dutch East India Companies in 1600 and 1602.