An Important and Previously Unrecorded English Delftware Basket

The survival of any dated ceramic or work of art helps scholars and collectors to accurately ascribe a year to undated examples on the basis of form, style and decoration. Delftware and other English pottery are notable in the study of ceramics because of the profusion of dated pieces which survived as treasured mementos of a family occasion such as a marriage. The importance of dated pieces was recognised by Victorian ceramics scholars and in 1891 I.E.E Hodgkins published Examples of Early English Pottery, Named, Dated and Inscribed representing an early effort to record a chronology of dated and documentary ceramics. In 1984, this work was superseded by Dated English Delftware (1) in which Louis L. Lipski and Michael Archer recorded and illustrated known examples of dated delftware. In his introduction, Michael Archer notes the innate obsolescence of such a publication, primarily because new examples would appear. However, this publication has become an invaluable handbook for the study of delftware. In it, the authors record 1776 objects predominantly from the Stuart and Georgian era. This catalogue, drawn from information gathered by Louis Lipski over thirty years, collates the holdings of Museums in Britain, Europe and America, private collections, publications of exhibitions and auction records. Within the book only 20 pieces dated 1651 are recorded (thirteen of which are wine bottles, relatively common survivors from the 17^th century) (2). Of these examples, it is worth noting no. 889, a posset-pot and cover with raised bosses with the crowned initials K∙G above 1651 from the Dr. J.W.L. Glashier (3), the pot shares a sparseness of decoration typical of objects from the time of the Commonwealth, but the hand is almost certainly the same as the present basket. Interestingly it also shares the same surname initial; the Fitzwilliam posset-pot and cover were acquired by William Edkins in about 1880 from a sale of a descendant of Mr Keelynge Greenway, for whom it was said to have been made.

Only four dated delftware baskets are recorded in Michael Archer and Louis L. Lipski (4) ranging in date from 1676-1681, some of which may have been made on the Continent. They vary in form and decoration; all four are larger than the 1651 example, the earliest from 1676 is painted with the arms of Lyte of Lytes Carey in Somerset (5) from the Maxwell-Lyte collection, Victoria & Albert Museum (c.15-1972), an hexagonal example painted with the initials and date M*T/1679 from the A.W. Franks collection, British Museum (E.46), a rectangular basket painted with a still life of birds and butterflies among flowers in a vase and bowls of fruit, initialled SB and dated 1670, Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia (1953-898), and another rectangular openwork basket painted with birds and insects flanking a fruiting tree before a picket fence, initialled AS and dated 1681, City Museum, Liverpool (M.1877). Later baskets with four handles and solid bases are known and discussed in the Transaction of the ECC (Vol. 13 pt. 2).  Examples of the form are recorded in the Fitzwilliam Museum catalogue, see Archer, op. cit. (2013), p. 279. A dated example of the form made in 1698, painted with Jacob wrestling an angel, is illustrated Jonathan Horne, English Tin-Glazed Tiles, London, 1989, p. 80, fig XVI (later in the Benjamin Edwards III Collection, sale Christie’s, New York, 26 January 2010, lot 341).

Examples of delftware baskets from the 18^th century makers in England and Ireland are well-known, a flared basket with four rope-twist handles, sponged in blue an painted with figures in landscape is in the Glaisher collection (6). Many of the delftware centres in Britain and Ireland produced baskets in the mid-18^th century, most recognisable are the baskets made at Henry Delamain’s World’s End Pottery in Dublin. These forms, based on Arita baskets, were more refined and often profusely decorated, presumable responding to increasing competition from the porcelain manufacturers in Chelsea, Bow, Derby and Worcester amongst others, as well as imported wares from Europe and the Far East.

The form of this basket, if not the scale, were it made of wicker, would not look out of place in a Dutch still-life from the Golden Age. So the reproduction of an everyday utility object may be a visual pun or a trifle with some hidden meaning to the recipient, rather than a practical object; in a similar way to the production of delftware models of shoes in England and the Low Countries in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. The visual parallel between this basket and the basket or pail carried by a Brislington delftware figure dated 1691 in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum (7) is worthy of note. This figure is either purely ornamental or it may have had some practical use as a table ornament capable of holding something edible. As the present form of basket does not appear in English delftware, it may be useful to examine some other similar forms in metal ware and Continental pottery. There are several rare silver circular baskets of broadly similar design dating from before the Restoration. An example made in 1597 (8), another in 1612 (8), a basket attributed to Richard Blackwell I, 1624-1640 (10) and a basket with maker’s mark PG above a rose, made in 1641-2 (11) are all made in London. These larger baskets are referred to in contemporary accounts as fruit baskets (12) and demonstrate the increased popularity of fresh and candied fruits at the beginning of the 17^th century. As Philippa Glanville observes, these baskets tend to appear on the listings of owners at the upper end of the social scale; for example the Earl of Derby is recorded as having three baskets gilded in 1651. It seems unlikely that the present basket should be intended for such a grand use both because of the practicality of size but also the simplicity of the decoration. Other dated delftware baskets, referred to previously, are called layette baskets, intended to hold the linen of a new-born. The form is derived from contemporary Continental silver prototypes and beadwork examples (13). Pottery examples from Northern Europe are also known (13), the inclusion of initials and marriage initials with a date make this an attractive theory. Perhaps the closest form is a Dutch basket made nearly a century later but based on a 17^th century prototype (15). The example, attributed from De Paeuw factory under the management of Jacobus De Milde, is of a similar design and scale to the 1651 basket. The base, however, is a solid piece, allowing the painter of the piece to paint a scattered comb, pin or needle and other objects to suggest the items purpose as a dressing table basket, intended to hold items for personal adornment and precious ribbon or lace. It is also worth noting a basket in the same publication (16) dating to the last quarter of the 17^th century; the author notes the elaborately moulded and pierced sides are left undecorated with only the solid interior of the base filled with an elaborate chinoiserie scene.

In the absence of an exact comparable, it is useful to compare ornamental styles; as previously discussed, inscriptions in a very close hand to the present basket are seen on a posset-pot and cover of 1651 and on other dated objects made throughout the 1650s. The pierced ornament is also typical of the period and several objects use a similar technique, though none with the profusion of pierced ornament as this basket. More commonly, this style of decoration is seen on the necks of puzzle-jugs (17) and the perforated knops of a white candlestick in the Morgan Collection (18). The twisted upright handles of the 1651 basket are reminiscent of the handles of large mugs and small fuddling cups in white delftware, although the closest similar handle on a basket is not seen until the early 18^th century (19).

1651 was a pivotal year in English history. Two years after the execution of Charles I, a series of battles between the Parliamentarians and Royalist and Scottish armies culminated in the conclusive defeat of Charles, Prince of Wales, by Cromwell’s New Model Army at the Battle of Worcester in September 1651. At a time of great turbulence, it is remarkable that such a fragile and apparently simple object, should survive intact to the present day.

Notes

1. Louis L. Lipski & Michael Archer, et al, Dated English Delftware, London, 1984.
2. Lipski & Archer, ibid., 1984, no. 98 (a moulded dish painted with the Arms of the Worshipful Company of Grocers), no. 99 (a moulded fecundity dish), nos. 889-891 (a posset-pot and cover initialled K∙G and two posset-pots), no. 970 (a moulded jug painted with the Arms of the Worshipful Company of Grocers), nos. 1434-1446 (five wine bottles named for `SACK’, five for `WHIT’ and three for `CLARET’) and no. 1739 (a model of a pelican and her young).
3. Michael Archer, Delftware in the Fitzwilliam Museum, London, 2013, p. 198, no D.14.
4. Lipski & Archer, ibid., 1984,pp. 358-360, nos. 1573-1576.
5. Michael Archer, English Delftware, Engels Delfts Aardewerk, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, 1972, p. 26, no. 45, pls. 45.
6. Michael Archer, ibid. (2013), p. 279, no. G13.
7. Michael Archer, Delftware The Tin-Glazed Earthenware of the British Isles, A Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1997, p. 402, no. L.4.
8. A scale pattern silver basket formerly in the collections of John Edward Taylor (1830-1905), Claude Leigh and Lord Harris of Peckham, sold Christie’s, London, 25^th November 2008, lot 53.
9. A basket with scroll handles pierced and engraved with fruit and scrolls between twisted wire borders, sold Christie’s, London, 4^th June 2013, lot 343.
10. A basket with scroll handles engraved with a coat of arms, pierced and engraved with cherub’s heads and scrolls, sold by Dreweatts, Donnington Priory, 9^th March 2011, lot 63.
11. Illustrated in Yvonne Hackenbroch, English and other Silver in the Irwin Untermeyer Collection, New York, 1969, no. 34.
12. Philippa Glanville, Silver in Tudor and Early Stuart England, London, 1990, p. 220.
13. Michael Archer, ibid., 1997, pp. 333-4, no. G.14.
14. Hugo Morley-Fletcher and Roger McIlroy, Christie’s Pictorial History of European Pottery, Oxford, 1984, p. 149, no. 13 for an example attributed to Frankfurt, dated `Anno 1670’ and painted with a couple being led by Cupid to their marriage bed.
15. Jan Daniël van Dam, Delffse Porceleyne Dutch Delftware 1620-1850, Zwolle, 2004, p. 146, pls. 93 and 93A.
16. Jan Daniël van Dam, ibid., p. 87, pl. 45.
17. See Lipski & Archer, ibid., p. 229, no. 1010 for a ring-shaped puzzle-jug dated 1655, a jug of similar form, undated but painted with a portrait of Charles II from circa 1660-61, see Michael Archer, ibid., 2013, pp. 192-3, no. D.9, another puzzle jug, decorated with chinoiserie landscape and a figure, painted with the initials I∙P, see Leslie B. Grigsby, The Longridge Collection of English Slipware and Delftware, London, 2000, Vol. II, p. 327, no. D299.
18. Michael Archer and Brian Morgan, Fair as China Dishes English Delftware From the Collection of Mrs. Marion Morgan and Brian Morgan, London, 1977, pp. 32-33, no. 13.
19. Michael Archer, ibid., 2013, p. 279, no. G.14.