Small vase decorated with ponies: C.1221-1928

Titles

Small vase decorated with ponies

Maker(s)

Pottery: Doulton & Co.
Decorator: Barlow, Hannah B.
Decorator's assistant: Burrows, Emma A.
Decorator's assistant: Castle, Kate J.

Entities

• Vase

Categories

• Stoneware
• Salt-glazed stoneware
• Art Pottery
• Doulton Lambeth ware

Description

Small, salt-glazed stoneware vase, with incised and blue, green and brown decoration, on a cream ground.

Thrown stoneware with incised, carved and applied decoration, coated in cream slip, painted in blue, green and brown, and salt-glazed. Oviform on a splayed base, with a flared neck. On the main part of the body is an incised drawing of ponies, four standing and one lying down, on grass, picked out in green and brown on a cream ground. The top of the base and the neck are decorated with a carved and incised pattern of stylized cactus leaves, coloured green and brown, and edged on the inside by a strip of applied, impressed shapes and on the outside by a brown-painted rim. The inside of the neck is painted deep blue. The underside is flat, with a thin, turned foot-rim, and unglazed.

Notes

History note: Purchased from Guthrie's shop in Lewisham in 1920 by Dr J.W.L. Glaisher, Trinity College, Cambridge.

Legal notes

Dr J.W.L. Glaisher Bequest

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1928-12-07) by Glaisher, J. W. L., Dr

Dating

19th Century
Victorian
Production date: AD 1885

Note

Doulton and Co, founded c.1815, originally made utility ceramics, with some stoneware jugs and ornamental bottles. Henry Doulton introduced decorative stoneware and architectural terracotta at Lambeth in the mid 1860s; over the next 50 years, he employed some 400 artists, many of them Lambeth School of Art students. Doulton championed individuality, innovation and versatility, and his modellers and decorators used a wide range of techniques and decorative treatments in producing both unique, artist-signed, and limited edition pieces. From 1872 the business expanded into faience and in the 1880s opened a factory at Burslem, Staffordshire, where bone china and other wares were made. In 1901, Edward VII granted the Royal warrant to the factory. Stoneware production at Lambeth reduced after 1914, and ceased in 1956.

Hannah Barlow studied at Lambeth School of art and was the first woman artist employed by Doulton & Co, where she stayed for 42 years (1871-1913). Her brother, Arthur, and sisters, Florence and Lucy, also worked there as decorators, the latter mainly working as Hannah’s assistant. Her work typically features animals incised into the wet clay (it is said that this was agreed with Florence, who specialised in birds). She mainly decorated stoneware, but also did some faience work.

The plethora of decorator’s marks on the base suggests that Hannah Barlow was probably only responsible for the incised drawing, and that assistant decorators worked on other parts of the pot. This accords with Dr Glaisher’s notebook comment: 'Miss Barlow's work is, as usual, good, but the rest of the vase, and its shape, is ordinary and commercialised and there is not the individuality and precision that characterised the earlier work'.

School or Style

Art Pottery