Antique Faience tea jar, silver shape, help please

Hi,
This lovely old tea jar came in a job lot of blue and white which contained English and Chinese items from the 18th and 19th centuries. I thought it would be easy to identify because of the V mark underneath, but the only mark I can find like this is for Varages, in Provence. That seemed possible so I emailed them, both their museum and existing faience factory, but that was months ago and no-one has replied. (Maybe they thought it was spam!) Can anyone help on this? I know it is "silver shape", probably late 18th century, and I think the damage to the glaze suggests faience or delftware. I have searched in vain online for anything quite like it. The flower design is familiar, I think it was popular in Germany and called strawflower? Any ideas please?

 

I have never heard the term "silver shape" - could you explain please?

 

As far as I can tell, it's a name for porcelain objects which imitated items of the time made in silver. For me the main characteristic is a kind of ridge or seam around the base and shoulders of something like a teapot, and also a very wavy shape. If you google "silver shape porcelain teapot", you should see some examples.

 

Must be part of the new vocabulary spawned by google.

 

Hi clutteredcloset, no, the shape name is in lots of books which predate google! It's just a classification for a style which was around circa 1790, although the name was probably invented by later collectors or dealers, I don't know when, just so people could understand the general shape and era of the object they were talking about.

 

Is it definitely faience and not porcelain?
Pattern looks like a variation on meissen/copenhagen "blue onion" to me, but as you say it is called strawflower ...this seems to suggests northern European work, rather than anything English.

 

Have never heard of it before.

 

I have. It's used for teapots a fair bit.

 

It is a beauty, Valerie. It looks like porcelain from here.

I have heard of silver shape here in the Netherlands too, first heard the term in my childhood, which was definitely pre-google.
I agree, strawflower, a design found mostly in continental northern Europe. I'm not sure, but isn't silver shape ware mostly northern European (including British) as well?

As for the mark, maybe @say_it_slowly knows it?

 

I've been giving it some thought but I don't know. The bluing to the glaze would suggest pearlware however it doesn't particularly look like pearlware. I also was thinking it looked rather like porcelain. Possibly the mark could also be the number 2 or a workman's mark. Here are some of the rabbit holes I've gone down and mention for discussion.

Plymouth Porcelain used a similar looking mark however I don't recall every handling any and from what I see browsing, their porcelain didn't seem like this. The mark is from Godden's.



The book, Painted in Blue Underglaze Blue Painted Earthenwares 1775-1810 by Lois Roberts/The Northern Ceramic Society, has a very similar looking tea caddy/canister/jar pictured. I'll have to spend more time looking to see if she offers any further information about it.





She also shows marks for Heath factory in a different section of the book along with the workman's mark which looks somewhat similar to the V/2. Shown just as an idea that it might be a workman's mark.



Welcome to my warren. On a different note, I noticed that one of my Worcester books seems to autographed by John Sandon. As it's a second-hand book can't say I ever noticed before so you never know what you'll find when you're looking for something else.

 

Oh, wonderful! I guess the seller never noticed.

 

I wondered what a pearlware caddy base might look like and while I don't own one, I do have a very battered creamware one which is similar in shape so here is the base which is also a flat one. Doesn't mean anything really.

 

Thanks for all your input everyone, extremely helpful! Bloey - I was probably wrong to call this faience, there was just something about the chipping to the glaze on the shoulders which made me think that, although I can't explain why. I'm really no good at porcelain types, soft paste, hard paste, creamware, pearlware . . . It would be enormously helpful to be able to tell them all apart, I suppose I will gradually gain expertise as I gather properly identified pieces, but it's a slow process!

say_it_slowly - Wow, that canister in the picture looks almost identical, it must be the same factory! Does that mean that it could be English after all? I had it so fixed in my mind that it was French, or maybe German, and I haven't found anything English very like it, but I've been looking for faience, and also at the standard porcelain factories like Lowestoft, New Hall etc. It did look a little bit like a Lowestoft one, but I'm always hoping to find a bit of Lowestoft! I think Plymouth would be wonderful but alas unlikely, still, miracles can happen.

I'm glad you are treasuring (or at least preserving) that batterd Wedgwood tea caddy, I hate to throw old ceramics away even when cracked, and the rural scene is very evocative of a vanished past.

I've never heard of the Heath factory - well, there's a lot I've never heard of - so I will research that now. I've just looked for the "Painted in Blue" book on Amazon, it's listed there but no copies available, I'll have to keep trying. It would be very helpful if it gives a possible maker for the different canisters pictured, they are very varied and attractive. I had also not thought that the bold V shape might be just a workman's mark. No wonder Varages didn't reply, they must have thought I was mad!

So much helpful input after over a year of fruitless research! That just goes to show that despite many ceramic books and google searches, a bit of tunnel vision and the wrong search terms will mean a waste of time. I still have several other pieces from the same job lot which are unidentified, I must take some photos and seek help on them also.

With immense gratitude to all!

 

So "Silver Shape" is a European term?

 

I'm not sure where the term "silver shape" came from but I've heard it used. I think it's just a way to describe that the popular ceramics of a time period were following in the same shapes as the popular silver of that period.

I did go back and look through Robert's book Painted in Blue and can't find any reference to a maker of the tea jar or any other information about it. It was in a section about range and diversity for items that didn't fit in the other chapters.

Still not sure it's pearlware but I did wonder if it might be a version of this pattern that she's calling "Queens Blue". This particular example of that pattern is from Spode but there are other makers.


I bought my copy of the book directly from the Northern Ceramic Society so you might look there for a copy if you decide you want one and don't find it elsewhere.

My creamware caddy is battered like so many of my ceramics. I've always been interested in studying examples rather than finding perfect ones. It's an old Wedgwood one.

 

Silver shape is certainly a Brit term. It would not surprise me a bit if this canister isn't a Brit, too.

 

I actually ordered Painted in Blue last night from the Northern Ceramic Society, and I'm sure it will be very useful in future, although I'm disappointed to hear that it doesn't identify the maker. It's so frustrating to finally find a picture of a researched item in a book, only to have it listed as "Unidentified"! But I will now have a good browse through my books on painted blue patterns, including Spode, and see if I can find other examples of this style, which still looks more continental to me, although I do hope it's English. They all copied each other so much it's difficult to be sure. Apart from the garlands draped from rings, the main distinctive feature is the odd rosette-shaped flowers, which remind me of pictures of home-made Christmas decorations made from dried orange slices, probably not the effect intended!

I have been looking in Berthoud & Maxell's A Directory of British Teapots (heavy book, very useful for pattern identification) and they have a whole section on "The Silver or Commode Shape", which is circa 1780 to 1805. Naming shapes seems to me to be a useful way of subdividing Georgian shapes in ceramics, which cover a very long period and lots of styles, and it comes just before the "Old Oval" shape. What would an American call it? The only teapot which is in painted blue and is remotely like the tea canister is plate 497, by Ephraim Chatterley, Hanley, in pearlware, but really they are not much alike. So the hunt goes on, but in a new direction and with a more open mind. Great will be my joy when I finally (with lots of help) manage to identify it, if ever. With so many competent but virtually unknown ceramic manufacturers at the time, it may never be firmly identified, but at least I know its approximate age, and will class it as English unless proved otherwise.