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Teapot
Unknown - Enlarge image
Teapot
- Place of origin:
Burslem, England (probably, made)
- Date:
ca. 1745 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Unknown (production)
- Materials and Techniques:
Slip-cast, salt-glazed white stoneware
- Credit Line:
Supported by the Friends of the V&A
- Museum number:
C.21:1, 2-1999
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 52d, case 6
Object Type
Early Staffordshire teapots were traditionally small, being graded by the makers themselves as for one or two cups. The tough slip-cast white stoneware is very thin, almost to the point of translucency.
Design & Designing
This pot has no prototypes in Chinese porcelain, although the general shape owes much to the products of two Dutch silversmiths, John Philip Elers and his brother David, who had made red stonewares in great secrecy at Bradwell Wood, Staffordshire, in the 1690s. No doubt many of their pots were available locally for copying. The early makers of block-moulds, desperate for Chinese designs with links to tea-drinking, have here used a source already 75 years old, converting engravings into bas-relief decoration, leaving the titles to explain their significance.
Although only about five examples of this teapot survive, the fact that these were made from several slightly differing moulds suggests a certain degree of popularity at the time. One of them is made of lead-glazed red earthenware, confidently dateable to the 1740s.
