Period: Georgian, late 18th Century
Maker: New Hall Porcelain Works
This part set comprises a rare tea plate, two tea bowls, a coffee can and a shared saucer in New Hall’s popular ‘Trench Mortar’ pattern.
The nickname derives from the pipes jutting from the ground in front of the thatched farmhouse. They reminded later British collectors of mortars that fired shells into enemy trenches during World War I. The New Hall artists probably misinterpreted stylised representations of traditional Chinese roof tiles that one finds on some Chinese export blue-and-white ware of the period. The farmhouse, too, bears little relation to what one finds in China or Japan. Standard elements of Chinese and Japanese composition are the stylised rocks, drum bridge and distant mountains, and the brocade-type borders.
The decoration is transfer-printed in underglaze blue. The grey-tinged porcelain is typical of New Hall hard-paste which the factory produced in its first few decades before switching to the new bone china formula.
Condition Excellent, apart from slight rubbing to the gilding along the rim of one tea bowl and the coffee cup. There are a few manufacturing flaws. The cobalt blue has ‘bled’ slightly down the inside of the coffee cup, as can be seen in one of the photographs, and there are some firing cracks in the very thin, translucent base of the cup. On the farmhouse roof of the large tea plate, a circular flaw can be seen and felt. This occurred prior to printing and glazing and was presumably caused by an attempt to mend that section of the porcelain. Apart from a few tiny specks of stray gilding on the central picture, the plate is otherwise in perfect order.
Tea plate diameter: 21.7 cm
Saucer diameter: 13.4 cm; height: 2.6 cm
Coffee cup height: 6 cm; width with handle: 8.6 cm
Tea bowls diameter: 8.3 cm; height: 4.1 cm
Net weight: 642 g
Medium: Hard-paste porcelain
Origin: Shelton, Hanley, Staffordshire Potteries, England
