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Teapot
Whieldon, Thomas, born 1719 - died 1786 - Enlarge image
Teapot
- Place of origin:
Staffordshire, England (possibly, made)
- Date:
ca. 1760 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Whieldon, Thomas, born 1719 - died 1786 (possibly, maker)
- Materials and Techniques:
Earthenware, with sprigged decoration and stained lead glaze
- Credit Line:
Bequeathed by Mr Wallace Elliot
- Museum number:
C.47&A-1938
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 53a, case 1
Object Type
This is known as an apple teapot, as its form was loosely inspired by that fruit. Staffordshire teapots of the mid-18th century were usually small, being described in contemporary bills as 'one dish' or 'two dish' (meaning for one cup or two). This is probably a one-dish example.
Makers & Manufacturers
Apple and pear teapots are known to have been made by several Staffordshire potteries in the 1760s. An undated letter from the blockmaker and manufacturer William Greatbatch to Josiah Wedgwood casts some light on this: 'have sent you an apple tpt. Should be glad to know if you wou'd have leaves on the side the same as use to be'. On 21 January 1765 Greatbatch supplied Wedgwood with two of these teapots which, to judge from the fragments excavated at Greatbatch's pottery site at Fenton, probably did not have applied leaves on the body. Fragments have also been excavated on the site of Thomas Whieldon's pottery at Fenton (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire) and at an unidentified site at Town Road, Hanley, Staffordshire.
Design & Designing
With the fashion for fruit and vegetable forms in the 1760s and 1770s - notably melon, cauliflower and pineapple - makers of teaware resorted to the humble and unexotic apple and pear as models for their tiny teapots. The quality of modelling differed widely between makers, and although the scale of this particular teapot is close to that of a large apple, the pot itself bears little resemblance to the fruit after which it was named.
