Doe and Hope

Description

The tin glazed pottery punch bowl of good size, painted in the oriental style with a bird, a fence, bamboo, peony and other blooms, probably Lambeth, London and surviving from the third quarter of the eighteenth century.

The condition of the bowl is purely perfection in imperfection. Someone who was desperate to keep it in tact and in the family for years to come has lovingly riveted it. It has therefore been in three or four pieces and then iron riveted in the late 19th or early 20thc century to ensure its memory can live on.

English delftware is tin-glazed pottery made in the British Isles between about 1550 and the late 18th century. The main centres of production were London, Bristol and Liverpool with smaller centres at Wincanton, Glasgow and Dublin. In Bristol and Lambeth from the mid-18th century there was the much-practiced technique imported from Italy, bianco sopra bianco (white-on-white). The object was covered in a tin-glaze tinted with a small amount of colouring oxide, with decoration over it in white tin-glaze.

Character and joy abide.