Food warmer: C.18-1980

Titles

Food warmer

Maker(s)

Linthorpe Art Pottery
Designer: Dresser, Christopher (Probably)
Pottery manager: Tooth, Henry

Entities

• Bowl

Categories

• Earthenware
• Art Pottery

Description

Moulded earthenware with incised decoration and honey-brown glaze.

Hollow ,closed bowl, approximately hemispherical with a concave upper surface. The sides are decorated with incised, floriated scrolls below which are three incised, horizontal bands. On the upper surface an incised floral spray is enclosed by two concentric bands and a continuous wavy line border which has stylised leaves on either side of it. The whole surface is covered with a honey brown glaze which has crazed, perhaps with age. The underside is recessed, with a circular aperture in the centre.

Notes

History note: Haslam & Whiteway, 105 Kensington High Street, London, W.8.

Legal notes

Purchased with the Applied Arts Duplicates Fund.

Place(s) associated

• Middlesbrough ⪼ England

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bought (1980) by Haslam & Whiteway

Dating

19th Century, Late#
Victorian
Circa 1879 CE - 1882 CE

Note

Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) was Art Director at Linthorpe from 1879 until 1882. He recruited Henry Tooth as the pottery’s manager, until in 1883 Tooth left to form Bretby Art Pottery, in Derbyshire. Dresser himself was not based at the pottery, but supplied designs and suggestions on form and colour. A Linthorpe prospectus, c.1880, suggests his name was as important to the pottery as his practical input and notes that Dresser’s impressed mark was included on all Linthorpe wares as ‘a guarantee of their genuineness, and of their being made in strict accordance with the principles of decorative Art’. Dresser preferred simple thrown shapes and decoration, aiming to ‘work the material in a simple and befitting manner’, such that ‘satisfactory results are bound to accrue’. Originally trained as a botanist, he maintained a strong interest in botanic design, and held professorships in both scientific and art botany. In 1879, with Charles Holme, he established Dresser & Holme, to import Japanese and oriental wares; and in 1880 he became ‘art manager’ of the Art Furnishers’ Alliance, a body established by a number of leading manufacturers to promote the manufacture and sale of ‘high class goods of artistic design’.

Linthorpe Art Pottery was set up by John Harrison in Middlesborough, in 1879, both to produce innovative art wares and to provide employment for 100 local people. The pottery initially used the same local red clay as a brickworks formerly on the same site, though later imported white clays from Cornwall. It was one of the first 19th Century potteries to use gas fired kilns and to successfully use glazes as decoration in their own right. Linthorpe supplied Liberty’s and other major outlets, but closed when Harrison died in 1889.

This piece is assumed to be a food warmer (ie, for use would be filled with hot water and a bung inserted in the vent hole).

School or Style

Art Pottery