Date: circa 1810
Period: Regency
Maker: Job Ridgway & Sons
Job Ridgway & Sons made imaginative use of the ‘Imari’ style in this superb Regency teacup and saucer. The vivid berries and star-burst flowers are representations of a raspberry bush and climbing clematis, composed here with perfect (and un-Japanese!) symmetry. The iron-red and green enamel, cobalt blue and gold are Imari colours, with a buttermilk-buff added. The composition is bold yet elegant, devoid of brash ostentation. The thin and translucent bone china is equal to Spode’s, although Job Ridgway and his sons had only been making porcelain for a couple of years. Unmarked, but it is pattern 435. (Bute-shaped cups exist in the same pattern are marked 435 on the bottom.) For the same London shape, but in a different Ridgway pattern, see Plate 18 in Geoffrey Godden’s book Ridgway Porcelains.
Condition: Mint/perfect & unused.
Cup height 4.2 cm; diameter 8.6 cm; width, including handle 10 cm
Saucer diameter 13.6 cm
Weight: 184 g
Medium: Bone china (porcelain)
Origin: Stoke-on-Trent, England
For background on the factory see Ridgway pottery at Cauldon Place in Makers & Artists
