Tea Ware on Wednesday: A Mid-Week Milk Jug for Spring

item: large creamer or small sauce boat
maker: GROSVENOR (part of Copeland-Spode) for Sheraton Designs; Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England; circa: 1930s
made of: bone china; multicolor hand-painting plus gilt over purple transfer design

Here is a recent addition to our collection of Spring-heralding tea ware-- just looking at the hand-painted flowers makes us want to set up a tea table under a blossoming tree. 'Round here it continues to pour down with rain, however, so the tea-under-tree must wait (the blossoms, alas, probably cannot); in the interim Plans Get Made, menus are drafted, teas are selected... so we shall be good and ready when the sun bursts forth again to dry us out and warm us enough for outdoor tea-taking. Please let it be soon...

Our friends at ThePotteries.org (such a handy website for identifying Staffordshire china marks) tell us that the mark you can see in Picture Number Two dates from the 1930s or so. This piece (and undoubtedly others like it) was commissioned by Sheraton Designs and made by Grosvenor, one of the best-quality potteries in and around Stoke. Grosvenor began life as Jackson and Gosling, changed its name, moved a few times -- this is par for the course with Staffordshire potteries from Victorian times onward -- and was eventually rolled into Copeland(s), which itself became part of the Spode family. Items were made with Grosvenor marks from the turn of the 20th Century until the 1950s.

The hand-painting is delicate and detailed, as the Third Image shows... the base design is a purple transfer (less common than, but as attractive as, magenta transfer), itself very delicate, over which red, pink, purple, green, and teal were applied by steady hands holding very thin brushes. Gold is minimal -- only a scribble and outline on the handle and a dash around the rim  -- but it is enough. This piece is full of red and purple energy!

Honestly, Trix and I cannot agree on the intended first use of this beautiful vessel... I believe that it is probably a small sauce server which has been separated from its underplate; Trixie says it was always a creamer. No matter, for we love to use it as a fat milk jug (since cream is off the menu at present, more's the pity) and it brings bunches of cheer and delight to our table.

On another day I will show you more of our Grosvenor/Copeland(s) stuff, which is in another palette altogether but is equally high-hat-gorgeous. Our thanks to the kind people who could bear to part with these treasures so that we could adopt them.

Greetings and best wishes for SPRING (now if it would only stop raining...!!!),
xo, Dustin

Taken from http://tdustinfannings.blogspot.com/