Period: Regency
Maker: Coalport Porcelain Works (John Rose & Co.)
The beauty of the flower painting and relief moulding on this Coalport dessert plate from 1820-25 rivals that of William Billingsley’s renowned Nantgarw factory in Wales.
In his book Coalport 1795-1926, Michael Messenger notes how some of the finer Nantgarw porcelains have moulded designs incorporating six elongated scrolls or “arches” and ‘similarly some of the best painting on Coalport of the same period appeared on plates of this same general type.’
Coalport’s version has six double-barred scrolls between festoons and clusters of flowers in low relief. On our plate, the white relief is against a powder-blue ground The example shown in Plate 122 of Messenger’s book, from the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, has a grey-ground border and lacks the gilt chain of leaves. The Cheltenham plate also has a tight flower grouping, leaving a large expanse of white, while on ours, full advantage is made of the white central reserve, with a far looser and more romantic spray of roses in full bloom that follows the curvature of the plate. The two pink roses have a delicate colouring worthy of Billingsley.
Finely decorated Coalport dessert plates with this ‘linked double-scroll moulding’ were popular among wealthy buyers and Messenger is surprised at the paucity of references in the Coalport pattern books. He speculates that such plates were either specially commissioned, or independent decorators employed.
The back of the plate bears a large medallion printed in brown, trumpeting a gold medal given to John Rose, Coalport’s founding owner, by the Society of Arts on 30th May, 1820. The award was for Rose’s contribution in helping stamp out the scourge of lead poisoning in the ceramics industry, by developing a leadless felspathic glaze. Rose also added felspar to the body, and the backstamp refers to ‘Coalport Improved Feltspar Porcelain,’ omitting to mention that the medal was only for the glaze.
Rose’s new feldspar glaze and body contributed to the high quality of many Coalport porcelains in the 1820s, which Messenger writes were ‘notable for the freshness, vigour and confidence of the decoration.’
There is also an impressed numeral ‘2’ used by Coalport between 1815 and 1825.
Condition Generally excellent. Some gilt rubbing to leaf chain around the central reserve and to edge of rim. A few small light scratches to glaze of white reserve.
Diameter: 23.6 cm
Net weight: 407 g
Medium: Feldspar porcelain
Origin: Coalport, Shropshire, England.
For background on the factory, see Coalport Porcelain Works (John Rose & Co.). For background on Billingsley, see William Billingsley, 1758-1828.
