Date: circa 1814
Period: Regency
Pattern number: 2/1070
A large and imposing Regency teapot by the Ridgway brothers, boldly decorated with a well-painted flower basket panel, gilt seaweed, stylised conch and nautilus shells.
Shape: The circular body is topped by a fluted and ribbed flange, gilded on the white with acanthus. The gently curving sides have convex ribs between vertical flutes, and taper from the flange. The top of the ‘Old English’ handle forms a leaf where it joins the flange. The gilt-decorated spout also has a leaf moulding around the joint with the body.
Decoration: Gilt seaweed adorns the underglaze blue ground. The body has a gilt vase of well-painted flowers, set inside a buttermilk-ground panel. On the opposite side is a large gilt conch shell with a pale blue and buttermilk ground, and at the back, between the handle joints, is a gilt and buttermilk nautilus shell. The lid is decorated with twin conches, plus the nautilus shell.
Norfolk Museums has a coffee cup in the same Ridgway pattern, and the creamer is Plate 776 on Page 130 of Michael Berthoud’s A Cabinet of British Creamers
We shall also be offering two tea & coffee trios, a sucrier, creamer and slop bowl in the same pattern.
Condition: Good. Stress hairline on lower spout but does not encircle the spout. Shallow chip on inner rim where lid rests. Gilding rubbed on corners of handle, edges of finial and tip of spout. Staining and crazing of inner tea strainer from use. Glaze pitting and other imperfections that occurred during manufacture. Please study photographs.
Origin: Stoke on Trent, England
Width from spout to handle 27.2 cm. Height 13.5 cm
Weight: 932 g
Medium: Bone china (porcelain)
See Ridgway partnerships at Cauldon Place in Makers & Artists for background on the factory.
