‘ IN THE TRUE STYLE OF A BRITISH NOBLEMAN’

The rich ceramic collections at Saltram House, Devon, had been virtually untouched for almost a century when the property was acquired by the National Trust in 1957. Its numerous table services had been well used before then to entertain visitors including, in 1804, several Dutch o cers, who reported ‘the dinner, dessert and wines were in the true style of a British Nobleman’. Unusually, these services include examples of Marseilles faience, attributed to the Gaspard Robert factory, and made c1770–75. Each piece is painted with an arm erect grasping a stag’s ‘attire’ (antler), the crest of the Parker family of Saltram and Whiteway, Devon.

The 67-piece service is amusingly decorated with vegetables, flowers and marine subjects painted in black enamel outlines washed over with green. It now includes a soup tureen, two oval terrines, and a smaller oval terrine, two saucières with under-trays, a covered pot for gravy (or custard), a square salad bowl, a porte-huilier, a mustard pot, six reticulated corbeilles in two sizes, two seaux á liqueur ovale á compartiment (divided bottle coolers for liqueurs), a seaux á verre ovale (a monteith or wine glass cooler), eight round serving dishes in four sizes, nine soup plates, 11 dinner plates and 18 dessert plates.

The Parker service, while rare, may not have been unique, to judge by an entry in a 1772 inventory of Ditchley, Oxfordshire, seat of George Henry Lee, 3rd Earl of Lichfield (1718–72): ‘A set of Green & White French Table Delph, containing a Tureen and Dish (mended) 14 oblong Dishes, 2 round do, 54 plates and 4 Sauceboats & Covers.’

The Parker service probably arrived at Saltram in the mid 19th century from Whiteway, near Chudleigh, Devon. It may have been ordered around 1775 when Chudleigh was settled on Montagu Edmund Parker. The Saltram and Whiteway estates combined in 1842, when two Parker cousins married. The service was recorded in an 1894 inventory of Saltram as ‘Old green Marseilles Ware Dinner Service from Whiteway’. ABOVE Part of a dinner and dessert service with the Parker crest, made at the Gaspard Robert factory, Marseilles, c1770–75, belonging to Saltram House, Devon RIGHT A faience plate with the Parker crest from the service