Painted tea caddies and the tunbridge connection

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2004 by Noel Riley

The few model houses in the sample that did not conform to the general pattern of the Tunbridge ware types are likely to have been made by individual craftsmen or amateurs imitating the products of commercial enterprises.

Unpainted wooden boxes and small items of furniture were also sold in artists' shops to be decorated with what we now call penwork, and many of the Tunbridge ware retailers supplied the necessary equipment: designs on paper and directions for transferring them to the surface to be decorated, the black (or occasionally colored) watercolor for the decoration, (11) the varnish for protecting the painted surface, and, for most objects, sheets of colored lining paper, usually of red, pink, light green, or blue. Pastime manuals of the second quarter of the nineteenth century also give instructions for penwork. (12)

Penwork decoration, with designs in reserves on a black background, may itself have first developed within the Tunbridge ware industry. Tea caddies and other boxes produced commercially between about 1810 and 1820 were often decorated with a central print surrounded by simple borders of neoclassical or floral ornament executed in penwork (see Pl. X).

There is evidence too that more elaborate penwork may have been carried out by professional artists. A tea caddy in the Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery decorated with landscapes and rustic buildings is one of a number of items acquired from the Wise family, members of which are known to have produced print-decorated Tunbridge wares with penwork borders. A note in the handwriting of George Wise (1779-1869) records that this tea caddy was "painted by Mr Connard." (13) An Edward Connard was listed in the Brighton directory of 1822 as "Brighton ware manufactory and fancy japanner" at 21 East Street, Brighton. (14) Whether he painted the tea caddy is not known, but it is tempting to speculate that the caddy may have been a professionally painted sample used to promote penwork in a Tunbridge ware manufacturer's showroom.

Although in many ways it resembles japanned decoration carried out with pigmented varnishes, penwork was essentially a watercolor technique, with varnish used only as a final protection for the painting. This made it eminently suitable for amateur work, and toward 1820 it emerged as a popular pastime for ladies. Of twenty-two dated examples of penwork, the earliest is 1816, but fourteen are dated between 1820 and 1830. (15) It is clear both from surviving examples and instructions in pastime manuals that penwork was most often carried out by amateurs.

Early examples of penwork on Tunbridge ware have decorative borders done with a simplicity of patterning and a technical regularity that suggest a commercial undertaking. These are far removed from the often complicated and idiosyncratic overall designs carried out with obvious enthusiasm but a notable disparity of skill in the later phases. Much penwork is naive, even crude, in execution, while some examples are outstanding in their complexity and artistic accomplishment. The skill of some of these amateurs is hardly surprising in view of the attention paid to drawing, painting, and other artistic pursuits in a gentlewoman's education. Penwork seems to have flourished as a pastime into the 1840s, when the Tunbridge ware industry had turned its full attention to the production of wood mosaic wares.