Delft a good hand
such centres as Lambeth, Vauxhall, Battersea and Southwark in London and in Bristol, Liverpool, Wincanton in Somerset, Glasgow and Dublin.
Sadly for the historian, the products are marked only rarely, leaving researchers to rely on shards of broken pottery excavated from known sites as one of the few means of identification.
The range of products was extensive, including plates, wall plaques, mugs, jugs, puzzle jugs, wine bottles, posset pots, barber’s bowls, candlesticks, Toby jugs, vases and brick-shaped pots for holding flower or bulbs and wall and fireplace tiles featuring hundreds of d different designs.
Other mainstays were apothecaries’ drug jars and pill slabs, sometimes plain, but occasionally inscribed with n names or decorated w with armorials.
If cost is no problem, look for examples of the so-called “blue dash chargers”, one of the earliest of all commemorative ceramics, made until the end of the 18th century, but expect to pay upwards of £2,000£4,000 for a decent example.
They feature naive portraits of reigning monarchs in their coronation robes ranging from Charles II and William of Orange and Queen Mary, invariably decorated with tulips, to George III, while other rare examples are decorated with The Temptation, showing Adam and Eve and the snake in the Garden of Eden.
The name comes from the characteristic dashes of blue glaze decoration, like stylised ropework, which appear around the rim of the plates, while trees and foliage are done invariably by dabbing a sponge dipped in appropriately coloured glaze.
The chargers were produced in relatively large numbers in London and Bristol and were intended purely as decorative objects to be displayed on dressers and the appropriately named delft racks.
The Warner Collection spans three centuries, the earliest piece being a London delftware relief-moulded La Fécondité (Fecundity: the ability to produce an abundance of offspring)dish dated 1638, depicting the seductive Venus reclining naked, attended by frolicking putti.
One of the earliest dated examples of this purely decorative type of ware made between 1633 and 1697, they are said to be derived from the ceramics of French nch Huguenot potter Bernard Palissy (1510-1589).
Illustrated in Michael Archer and Louis Lipski’s book Dated English Delftware, the dish is recorded in Warner’s records as having been purchased at Christie’s tie’s in 1975 for 500 guineas. eas. It is estimated at £8,000£12,000 this time out.
Sir Frederick Edward Warner (1910-2010) was born in St Pancras and educated at Wanstead National and Bancrofts Schools in Essex. He graduated in chemistry from University College London in 1931, subsequently carrying out a post graduate diploma in chemical engineering.
In his first job at a chemical works in East Stratford, he noticed the odd effects that chemical vapours were having on his colleagues, who were later diagno diagnosed with methyla methylation.
Thi This fuelled a life-long inte interest in risk as assessment and e ensuring the health a and safety of people working and living in high r risk areas, an in interest that was to se see him serve on ma many future gover government committees and important im interna international projects.
Eventually, he and Herbert Cremer established Cremer and Warner in 1956, working on problemsolving at large-scale chemical production plants and on the issues of air and water pollution.