Period: Regency
Maker: John & William Ridgway
Description: The underglaze blue grounds of the trio are adorned with gilt seaweed. The saucer well has a finely painted basket of summer flowers on a pale apricot ground. The border has two large stylised conches with a pale blue and cream ground plus a gilt and buttermilk nautilus shell. The teacup also has a flower basket set inside a pale apricot panel. On either side is a large conch shell with a pale blue and cream ground, and at the back, between the handle joints, is a cream nautilus shell. There is a moulded leaf where the top of the handle joins the body. The taller coffee cup is similar except that it has only one conch and a nautilus shell either side of the panel.
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 are also offering for sale another tea & coffee trio, a teapot, creamer, sucrier and slop bowl from the same set.
Condition: In general, very good. The gilding and enamelling are all bright and fresh, with just miniscule spots of gilt rubbing near the centre of the saucer. Teacup has a very small porcelain tear from manufacture, and there is an associated fault above it, below the rim, where an attempt has made at concealment through gilding. The coffee cup has a very small (8 mm) inner rim hairline that does not extend to the outside of the cup.
Teacup height 4.8 cm; diameter 9.3 cm; width with handle 12 cm
Coffee cup height 6 cm; diameter 8 cm; width with handle 10.5 cm
Saucer diameter 14.5 cm
Weight: 363 g
Medium: Bone china (porcelain)
Origin: Stoke on Trent, England
For background on the factory see Ridgway pottery at Cauldon Place in Makers & Artists
