Description
Antique English creamware pottery teapot with a rare hand executed image of Christ ascending into heaven. The cartouche on the teapot bears a religous verse and the name of Mathew Echers and the date 1777.
EXHIBITION….IF THESE POTS COULD TALK.
This creamware teapot is a very rare and early example dated 1777. Josiah Wedgwood the ceramics master from Staffordshire is attributed as the inventor of creamware pottery. Wedgwoods technique and method was soon copied by numerous potteries and it is likely that this teapot is the work of a Derbyshire or Yorkshire Pottery.
One side of the teapot is decorated with a wonderfully naive picture of “Christ Ascending into Heaven”. Christ is illustrated with a beaming smile as he is lifted upwards on a magic carpet cloud through a host of souls.
The naive image is an aspect of early English pottery which I really appreciate as it often reflects the work of innocent and rather unskilled artists and it is this aspect which adds to the humanity to the teapot.
The extra feature of this creamware teapot is the cartouche bearing the name Mathew Echers and the date 1777. I cannot find the name Echers in any references and it maybe the case that the name was spent incorrectly which is also a warming feature one constantly finds on early pottery. The teapot was almost certainly made as a gift for our Mathew Echers in 1777. He must have been reminded by the verse on the teapot each time he had a brew “Let your conversation be such as becomes the Gospel of Christ”.
This perfectly reflects the spirit of the time and the great upsurge in Christian beliefs expounded by preachers such as the inspirational Methodist preacher John Wesley.
Mathew Echers would be amazed to see how his gift of a teapot is so admired today.