The Colorful World of Jasperware

 

QUESTION: Recently, while browsing in an antique shop, I came upon a small display plate with a Classical relief decoration. The plate looked like Wedgwood ware but its background color was sort of a pale salmon pink color with cream-colored decoration. The only Wedgwood pieces I’ve ever seen have been a light blue with white decoration. Since the price was low—the dealer said she didn’t think it was real Wedgwood but a contemporary copy—I bought it. Is this plate real Wedgwood? And if so, why the pink background color?

ANSWER: You got a real bargain. Your plate was, indeed, made by Wedgwood and because it’s pink, is on the rare side. Wedgwood introduced pink Jasperware in the late 19th century and never made it in large quantities. The pale rose color gave a delicate and romantic appearance to small decorative boxes and medallions. Today, pink pieces can sell for $500 to $1,200. 

Noted English potter Josiah Wedgwood invented Jasperware in 1774 after conducting over 5,000 carefully recorded experiments over several years.  Wedgwood made Jasperware of a dense white stoneware which accepted colors throughout its body and not just on the surface.

Usually described as stoneware, it has a smooth texture and unglazed matte "biscuit" finish. Wedgwood experimented with different colors and at first produced it in a pale blue that became known as "Wedgwood blue." Relief decorations in contrasting colors—usually in white but also in other colors—gave his pieces their characteristic  cameo effect. He produced the reliefs in molds and applied them to the ware as sprigs.

After several years of experiments, Wedgwood began to sell Jasperware in the late 1770s, at first making it in small objects, but adding vases from the 1780s onwards. It was extremely popular, and after a few years many other potters devised their own versions. 

The decoration was initially in the fashionable Neoclassical style, which became especially popular in the beginning of the 19th century. But Jasperware could also be made to suit other styles. Wedgwood turned to leading artists outside the usual world of Staffordshire pottery for designs. High-quality portraits, mostly in profile, of leading personalities of the day were a popular type of decoration, matching the fashion for paper-cut silhouettes. The wares were made into a great variety of decorative objects but not as tableware. Three-dimensional figures are normally found only as part of a larger piece, and are typically in white.

In his original formulation, Wedgwood tinted the mixture of clay and other ingredients  throughout by adding dye. Later, workers merely covered the formed but unfired body  with a dyed slip, so that only the body near the surface had the color. These types are known as "solid" and "dipped." The undyed body was white when fired, sometimes with a yellowish tinge. Workers added cobalt to the decorative elements of the pieces that were to remain white.

To add a bit of class ins marketing his ware, Wedgwood named it a after the mineral jasper.

Barium sulphate was a key ingredient. Ten years earlier, Wedgwood introduced a different type of stoneware called black basalt. He had been researching a white stoneware for some time, creating a body called "waxen white jasper" between  1773 and 1774. But this tended to fail in firing and wasn’t as attractive as the final Jasperware.

Besides its most common shade of pale blue, Jasperware came in a variety of other colors, including dark blue, lilac, sage green, black, and yellow. Sage green resulted from adding chromium oxide, blue to cobalt oxide, and lilac to manganese oxide, yellow to a salt of antimony, and black from iron oxide. Other colors sometimes appeared, including white used as the main body color, with applied reliefs in one of the other colors. The yellow is rare. A few pieces, mostly the larger ones like vases, use several colors together, and some pieces mix Jasperware and other types together.

Wedgwood dyed or stained the earliest Jasperware throughout and it has become known to collectors as "solid," but before long most pieces had colored slip applied  only on the surface. These became known as "dipped." Wedgwood first dipped his pieces in 1777 due to the high cost of cobalt oxide. By 1829 Jasperware production  had virtually ceased, but in 1844 production resumed making dipped wares. Solid Jasperware didn’t appear again until 1860.

Generally, Wedgwood made Jasperware into Neoclassical vases with heavily stylized Neoclassical cameos. Many of these cameos depict famous scenes from Greek literature and modern interpretations of Greek literature.

Shortly after discovering how to make Jasperware, Wedgwood went into business and started producing it in large quantities from a factory based in Staffordshire, England. In order to confuse potential competitors about the ingredients he used, he had the minerals for his clay ground in London, and then brought to Staffordshire in powdered form.

To discourage corporate espionage, Wedgwood made sure that no single one of his workers had a complete understanding of the process for making Jasperware, the formula for which he kept secret. By dividing up factory tasks and forcing his workers to become extremely specialized, he prevented them from becoming competitors.

Jasperware was Wedgwood’s most important contribution to ceramics. With its timeless style and class, it has become an enduring luxury material, beloved by collectors the world over for more than 250 years.

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A Furniture Re-Awakening

QUESTION: I recently purchased a mirror from an antique store in Thomasville, Georgia. The shop owner said the piece belonged to her grandfather, and she thinks the mirror dates back to the 1870's. I bought the mirror because I love the ornate carving on the frame. I'm also curious about the two round "stands" on the sides. Did people place candles on those platforms? What style do you think the mirror is? My best guess is Renaissance Revival.

ANSWER: You’re exactly right. Your mirror is in the Renaissance Revival style that was popular from 1855 to 1875. One of seven different revival styles prevalent during the Victorian Era, Renaissance Revival was an architectural style that easily made the transition from the custom, one-of-a-kind furniture shops in New York and Philadelphia to the mass-production factories of the Midwest.

Introduced in the early 1850's as a counter balance to the flowery Rococo Revival, Renaissance Revival borrowed elements from just about every furniture period since the 1400's. Originating in the French court of Napoleon III, the style soon took on a life of its own.

Furniture makers built pieces that consisted of an eclectic mix of 14th-century Renaissance, Neoclassical and 16th-century French derivation, based on a rectangular form with various embellishments.

While pieces of this style of furniture came in a myriad of shapes and sizes, they generally featured turned and fluted legs, raised or inset burled panels, heavily carved finials and crests, inset marble tops, and cookie-cut corners. On many mass-produced pieces, manufacturers added black and gold incising dn banding, and on finer, one-of-a-kind models, marquetry inlay and bronze or brass mounts. Most pieces of Renaissance Revival furniture were very large—ideal for the Victorian "more is more" philosophy. Makers of finer pieces preferred to use walnut, as it had been in the 16th century. And that was the most accurate thing about this revival style, which also borrowed heavily from the 17th-century Baroque and the earlier Gothic periods.

Prominent Renaissance and Neoclassical motifs such as columns, pediments, cartouches, rosettes, and carved masks, as well as plaques in porcelain, bronze, and mother-of-pearl became common types of decoration. Factory pieces had turned or cutout parts while finer examples featured carving or elaborate inlay of ebony and other exotic woods.

Before 1870 nearly all fine Renaissance Revival furniture came from small cabinetmaker shops in the East that made pieces to order. As the style gained popularity, furniture factories in the Midwest figured out how to mass produce the style for the Middle Class market. While some still used walnut, many chose to use cheaper ash or pine, painting it to look more high-style. The Renaissance Revival styles of the 1860s and 1870s marked the first time furniture makers used fine designs for mass-produced furnishings.

Large Midwestern factories, centered primarily in Grand Rapids, Michigan, manufactured pieces with turned and cut elements that could be produced more readily in volume and at lower cost. A few of the larger companies in Grand Rapids had committed to using the latest technology by the 1870's, among them Berkey & Gay, Nelson Matter and Phoenix. Renaissance Revival became the style of the Centennial Exposition and Grand Rapids was the star, but by that time it was already on its way out. The overpowering bedroom sets presented by Berkey & Gay cemented the reputation of the Grand Rapids factories as the manufacturers of bedroom sets or "chamber suites" as they became known.

New York cabinetmakers, such as Herter Brothers, on the other hand, produced pieces with elegant detail and elaborate inlays. They interpreted 16th- and 17th-century designs. And their motifs ranged from curvilinear and florid early in the period to angular and almost severe by the end of the period. Walnut veneer panels were a real favorite in their 1870s designs. Upholstery, usually of a more generous nature, was also often incorporated into this design style. Ornamentation and high relief carving included flowers, fruits, game, classical busts, acanthus scrolls, strapwork, tassels and masks. Architectural motifs, such as pilasters, columns, pediments, balusters and brackets, were another prominent design feature. Makers usually employed cabriole or substantially turned legs on their pieces.

The inevitable end came when the public desired to return to simplicity, the antithesis of Renaissance Revival, which embodied itself in the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th century and the resurgence of interest in American heritage which presaged the coming, and long running, Colonial Revival period.

Renaissance Revival furniture, while not the most favored by many of today's collectors because of its size and obvious statement, nevertheless played a pivotal role in American furniture history.