Flask with raised paste gilding: C.13-2023

Titles

Flask with raised paste gilding

Maker(s)

Factory: Minton & Co.
Decorating studio: Minton Art Pottery Studio (Perhaps)
Designer/decorator: Coleman, Rebecca (Probably)

Entities

• Flask

Categories

• Bone china
• Art Pottery

Description

Bone china flask painted with enamels and gilded.

Bone china flask with two circular sides, flattened at the bottom, and narrow round neck. On one side a finely painted portrait bust of a lady with flowing red hair and fringe, wearing a black velvet feathered cap, a square necked gown and necklace; on the other three butterflies set against the moon; each image encircled by a raised paste gilded band. The sides decorated with delicate raised paste gilded grotesques. The neck and rim covered with a gilded band. Underside flat and undecorated.

Notes

History note: Lent by Rita Smythe

Legal notes

Bequeathed by Ian and Rita Smythe, 2023

Place(s) associated

• Stoke-on-Trent ⪼ Staffordshire ⪼ England
• London ⪼ England

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (2023) by Smythe, Ian and Rita

Dating

Victoria
1871 CE - Circa 1880 CE

Note

Rebecca Coleman (d.1884) was a painter who exhibited at the Royal Academy and elsewhere between 1867 and 1879. For Minton’s Art Pottery (where her brother W.S.Coleman was Director), she painted ceramic plaques with portraits of ladies with exuberant hair very similar to this. After the London studio closed in 1875, twenty-five of her drawings were used at Minton China Works in Stoke on Trent, where raised paste gilding was particularly used on expensive dinner wares.

The Minton Art Pottery was at Kensington Gore, close to the Albert Hall, from 1871-75. It employed students from the National Art Training Schools, many of them women, to paint china and majolica They worked alongside skilled artists and drew on diverse sources, including Japanese and Islamic styles and the work of French contemporary potters such as Théodore Deck. The use of plaques and flat panels led to a revival of interest in pictorial tiles.

This is one of two similar flasks in the collection, they are maybe a pair or part of a series.

School or Style

Art Pottery