Dish
- Place of origin:
Southwark, England (made)
- Date:
- Artist/Maker:
- Materials and Techniques:
Tin-glazed earthenware, press-moulded and painted
- Credit Line:
- Museum number:
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 56d, case 13
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Object Type
Besides making cheap tableware, the early Netherlandish potters working in London attempted to produce display objects. Of these, the relief-moulded 'Fecundity' dishes are unlikely to have been used, except perhaps for fruit.
Design & Designing
The moulded and brightly colour-glazed pottery produced by the leading 16th-century French potter Bernard Palissy (1510-1590) hardly reached England during his lifetime. His designs, however, became influential long afterwards. This 'Fecundity' dish is closely copied from French earthenware versions (such as museum no. 77-1865) that were moulded directly from a bronze dish by Palissy himself. But as with other forms of artistic reproduction, the copies stray further and further from the original. Here the wonderful coloured lead glazes of the Palissy original are missing, while the wells around the rim are painted with crude symbols borrowed from contemporary Chinese porcelain. Outlines have been painted around the figures where the moulding is blunted with thick tin-glaze. However inferior this copy may seem to us, the strking image must have appeared exotic at the time, since dated examples range between 1633 and 1697.
Physical description
Press-moulded and painted in blue, turquoise green, yellow, orange and ochre with a reclining naked female figure emblematic of 'Fecundity' with five naked putti, one with a small dog over his shoulder. The border is moulded with human masks and baskets of fruit alternating with circular and oval depressions painted with roses and artemisia leaves over formalised motifs.
Body colour: Buff.
Glaze: Dull pinkish white on front and back with a few turquoise green smudges. At least two peg-like marks on the back, perhaps connected with firing.
Place of Origin
Southwark, England (made)
Date
ca. 1635 (made)
Artist/maker
unknown (production)
Materials and Techniques
Tin-glazed earthenware, press-moulded and painted
Dimensions
Height: 41.5 cm, Width: 50 cm, Depth: 5.5 cm
Object history note
Purchased from Mr T. Charbonnier, Bristol, 1928.
Made at one of the Southwark potteries, London
Descriptive line
Dish decorated with figures emblematic of 'Fecundity'
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Archer, Michael. Delftware: the tin-glazed earthenware of the British Isles. A catalogue of the collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: HMSO, in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1997. ISBN 0 11 290499 8
Labels and date
British Galleries:
TIN-GLAZED EARTHENWARE
The cosmopolitan style of early English tin-glazed earthenware reflects the fact that the technology for making it came to England via The Netherlands. The powerful image on the dish, La Fecondité (Fruitfulness), was taken from a design by the French potter Bernard Palissy (1510-1590), while the hugely popular 'bird-on-rock' design came from Chinese export porcelain. Occasionally, soft and brittle tin-glazed earthenware mugs or bottles even imitated the speckled appearance of much tougher German stonewares. [27/03/2003]
Materials
Earthenware; Tin glaze
Techniques
Glazed
Subjects depicted
Leaves; Fruit; Dog; Putti; Roses; Masks; Basket; Nude
Categories
Ceramics; British Galleries; Delftware
Collection code
CER
