Period: Regency
Maker: Josiah Wedgwood
The teacup and saucer with a bread & butter plate are rare examples of Wedgwood’s short-lived foray into bone-ash porcelain in the early 19th Century.
Josiah Wedgwood never made porcelain. His closest product was a new white earthenware dressed with bluish glaze that make it look like porcelain but was cheaper to produce. We now call it ‘pearlware.’
After the founder’s death in 1795, it took a long time for the family to embark on making the new bone china that began to sweep the market. ‘The next generation of Wedgwoods was temperamentally ill-equipped to meet the challenge, having received a liberal education more suited for gentlemen of leisure than hard-headed potters with clay on their hands,’ John des Fontaines wrote in his chapter on ‘Wedgwood bone china of the first period, 1812-1829,’ in Staffordshire Porcelain.
Josiah II finally took the plunge, and the first Wedgwood bone china went on sale in London in June 1812. Wedgwood’s tradition of chaste neoclassical restraint was out of step with the extravagant and flamboyant tastes of Regency England. The London manager Josiah Byerley wrote in 1813, ‘The public taste has been led to expect such a dazzling mixture of colour with gold in broad shads covering the whole ware, that their eyes are spoilt, for delicate and elegant borders, which are not dazzling and do not produce a striking effect.’
Sales of the Wedgwood’s new bone china probably peaked in 1815. In 1823, the London was showroom was instructed to clear all of its stock at reduced prices. Manufacture of bone china at Wedgwood stopped several years later – possibly as late as 1830 – and would not resume until 1878.
The limited scale and duration of Wedgwood’s first venture into bone china has added to the desirability of specimens for collectors. As Geoffrey Godden noted more than four decades ago, ‘these porcelains are hard to find – indeed, they have always been scarce and justifiably expensive!’
The back of the bread & butter plate has pattern number 876 in painted script. Normally, bone china from this period are stencilled or printed with the Wedgwood name in capital letters. The onglaze backstamps were lightly fired and often rubbed off entirely or appear very faint. No traces are visible on our items, but there is no doubt about their origin. The V&A Wedgwood Collection kindly supplied a copy of the identical 876 design in the old Wedgwood pattern books (see photograph).The flower design has a charming simplicity.
The teacup is of an unusual shape called ‘porringer’ after a type of bowl originally used to hold broth or gruel. Several Staffordshire factories made porringer-shaped cups around 1813-1815 but they were uncommon.
Condition Near perfect. Tiny spots of gilt rubbing on rim edges. A few specks of impurity from manufacture.
Cup Height: 58 mm
Diameter: 88 mm
Width with handle: 101 mm
Saucer Diameter: 142 mm; Height: 31 mm
Plate Diameter: 198 mm; Height 36 mm
Net weight: 552 g
Medium: Bone china (porcelain)
Origin: Etruria, England
