Flask
Cambrian Pottery (Established in Swansea in 1764, the Cambrian Pottery reached its creative peak under the proprietorship of Lewis Weston Dillwyn (1778-1855), who ran the Pottery (with a break between 1817 and 1824) from 1802 to 1836. Lewis Weston Dillwyn was a natural scientist, antiquarian, Member of Parliament, magistrate and landowner whose intellectual interests drove the Cambrian Pottery to become one of the most ambitious and artistically accomplished British potteries of the early 19th century. While the porcelain manufactured in Swansea between 1814 and 1825 justifies its reputation as among the finest of British porcelains, the pottery produced under Dillwyn’s ownership between 1802 and about 1809 was at its best an equally impressive achievement, most particularly that made for sale in the Pottery’s Cambrian Warehouse in London 1806-1808, the context for which this supper service was most likely created.)
Flask, earthenware, circular pilgrim-bottle shape with flat upper and lower sides and rounded sides around the middle, two incised circle around the centre of the upper and lower sides, to one end of the body a cylindrical neck with rounded lip-rim; painted in high temperature colours with to the upperside of the flask a scene showing an exotic peacock-like bird standing on a patch of grass and surrounded by spreading flowering shrubs all in blue, yellow, orange, green and brown, below the scene is the inscription "MARY PMV" in brown, to the lower side of the flask the inscription "PV / MV" in brown, surrounded by small stars and enclosed by an elaborate circular cartouche in orange, yellow, blue, green and brown featuring an inner border pattern and a ring of semi-circular motifs issuing spreading stylized foliage, border around the middle of the body of a yellow band decorated with a triangle and semi-circle pattern in brown and enclosed by two bands of orange semi-circles with blue dots, the neck painted blue and decorated with a brown lattice pattern.
Creation/Production
Date: 1802-1810
Acquisition
Bequest, 10/12/1953
Measurements
Height
(cm): 6.5
diam
(cm): 13.8
Width
(cm): 16.5
Height
(in): 2
diam
(in): 5
Width
(in): 6
Techniques
slip-cast
forming
Applied Art
enamelled
decoration
Applied Art
glazed
decoration
Applied Art
Material
earthenware
enamel
glaze