Slop basin

Object Type
Staffordshire bowls made specifically to match teawares are presumed to have been either for sugar (usually fitted with lids) or for emptying the dregs from a teapot in order to make a fresh brew. This wide bowl falls into the latter category.

Design & Designing
After Staffordshire potters adopted the mass-production techniques of press-moulding and slip-casting around 1740, the way was open for the development of new three-dimensional designs. These broke away from the earlier dependence on Chinese or silver prototypes and involved highly original ideas for ceramic tea- and tablewares, notably the vegetable forms that first became fashionable in porcelain in the mid-18th century. Whitish earthenware known as 'cream-coloured' was formed in moulds devised by skilled modellers (called 'blockmakers' or 'blockcutters') such as William Greatbatch (1735-1813) and the brothers Ralph (1715-1752) and Aaron Wood (1717-1785). The addition of new translucent glazes, for example the green and yellow developed by Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) while working in partnership with Thomas Whieldon (1719-1786) in 1754-1759, perfectly complemented a range of superbly made tea- and coffee-wares in the form of pineapples and (the hugely popular) cauliflowers. These were made in huge numbers throughout the 1760s, gradually going out of fashion in the 1770s.