Description
The redware dry bodied stoneware pottery teapot is globular shaped and embellished with refined Chinese figures with birds in flight within a floral cartouche. The cover also features similar decorations. The piece was made in Staffordshire England, in the mid-18th-century antique period. The underside of the teapot is impressed with a pseudo-Chinese style chop mark. The spout has a contemporary silver mount. NOTES; From the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge England. Many potters produced Dry-bodied (unglazed) red stonewares in the mid-18th century. The wares, almost always related to the drinking of tea or coffee, imitated imported Yi-Xing red stoneware from China. Prints and illustrated books like ‘The Ladies Amusement’ helped spread and popularise Chinoiserie imagery inspired by oriental culture. David Barker (1991) has attributed Thomas Barker, a potter operating in Fenton’s Foley area (now part of Stoke-on-Trent) in the 1760s and 1770s. Excavations at the old Barker workshop King Street in Fenton discovered a deposit of sherds dating from c.1770, which included redware.