Maker: Minton
The three signed cameo heads on this Minton plate are by the renowned pâte-sur-pâte artist Albion Birks, who worked at Minton from about 1876 to 1937. His signature, ‘ABirks,’ is discernible through a magnifying glass on one of the profiles. The other two carry his monogram, a conjoined AB.
Alboine Birks (his first name was anglicised to Albion) was taught the painstaking and expensive technique of pâte-sur-pâte by Marc Louis Solon, the universally acknowledged master. Solon had trained at Sèvres and fled from Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, finding employment at the Mintons factory at Stoke-on-Trent in 1871.
Pâte-sur-pâte literally means paste-on-paste. Geoffrey Godden gave the following explanation in his chapter on Minton in Staffordshire Porcelain. ‘Layer on layer of thin ‘slip’ or diluted porcelain was built up and the details sharpened with special carving tools, but it was not until the whole work was completed and fired that the added decoration became vitrified and semi-translucent so bringing the picture to life in variations of tint as the dark underlying body showed through the added white body according to the thickness of the various parts. The finished effect may be likened to a cameo although here the white reliefs are built up, not cut away.’
The back of the plate is impressed with MINTONS and the date cipher for October 1923.
Provenance: Coldwell Collection
CONDITION: Excellent
Diameter: 22.7 cm
Net weight 489 g
Medium: Bone china (porcelain)
Origin: Stoke-on-Trent, England
