Dessert basket
The Royal Worcester Porcelain Co. Ltd. (1862 to date)
Category
Ceramics
Date
1775 - 1785
Materials
soft-paste porcelain with underglaze blue
Measurements
50 mm (Height); 180 mm (Diameter)
Place of origin
Worcester
Order this imageCollection
Hill Top, Cumbria
NT 641447
Summary
Dessert basket, soft-paste porcelain, open form with inset base with flat foot rim and pierced border pattern of interlocking double loops, Worcester, 1775-85; decorated at the centre of the well in underglaze blue with a transfer print of the 'pine-cone' pattern, the external rim border with a lambrequin pattern in underglaze blue with scrolls at the top of each pierced loop, from which issue scrolling tendrils of leaves and flowers.
Full description
The object is a dessert basket – it might have been used for holding fruit, or been purely decorative. The sides of the basket were marked with a compass and cut out to create the beautiful, looped piercing. The holes made the object much harder to fire in the kiln, so small flowers have been added to the underside to strengthen the walls of the basket. This shape was produced by the Worcester porcelain factory from at least 1758, usually as part of a bigger dessert service. It is decorated with a transfer print of the ‘pine-cone’ pattern, which Worcester used on all its dinner and dessert wares to enable retailers to make up sets. Research into the collection of ceramics at Hill Top by has not revealed any evidence for purchases of ceramics by Beatrix Potter, but there are other types of primary written evidence – for example, letters, journal entries and inventories – that we can draw upon to help build a picture of how her collection was formed and what she liked. A probate inventory of her London family home, Bolton Gardens, was made in June 1914 following the death of her father, Rupert Potter (BP SOC 30/10). While this is frustratingly but typically vague in places, there is enough there to identify several pieces that would eventually make the northward move from London to Hill Top – either directly, or perhaps through Beatrix’s mother, Helen, who moved to the Lake District in 1915. The Bolton Gardens inventory gives the impression of a collection of ceramics befitting a wealthy, polite Victorian family and offers a sense of the ceramics and other objects that would have surrounded Beatrix as he grew up. From British manufacturers there is Wedgwood, Worcester, Minton, Leeds and transfer printed earthenware – everything from monogrammed dinner services to a broken Lowestoft teacup. Chinese and Japanese porcelain also formed part of the family collection. From the drawing room of her parent’s home, this Worcester dessert basket, a pair of Wedgwood ‘peony’ pattern plates (NT641370) and a Meissen style tea bowl (NT641563) would eventually make their home at Hill Top (1). None of these would naturally be considered as furnishings for a Lake District farmhouse, but were clearly held onto because of the meaning they had for Beatrix – and she was especially fond of Wedgwood. A nineteenth century German double salt or sweetmeat dish (NT641470) and Chinese spill vase (NT641409) were also treasured pieces from her parents. The Bolton Gardens inventory also lists ‘Bretaigne ware…decorated fleur-de-lys etc. in blue’, which are probably the examples of tin-glazed Quimper pottery in the collection at Hill Top (e.g., NT641552-3). (1) The object is listed in BP SOC 30/10, page 15, ‘Blue and white open work similar dish 7” in diameter’.
Marks and inscriptions
Underside of base: (crescent mark, in blue, applied under the glaze)
Makers and roles
The Royal Worcester Porcelain Co. Ltd. (1862 to date), manufacturer