Painted tea caddies and the tunbridge connection

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2004 by Noel Riley

Again, Ackermann was at the forefront of this new approach, with his illustrations of running patterns of recognizable plant varieties alongside formal borders of neoclassical motifs. He was almost certainly influenced in his choice of such plant designs by George Bullock (1782/83-1818), one of the "Fashionable Cabinet Makers" promoted in the pages of the Repository, who championed native plants as motifs in marquetry decoration. Favorite plants such as roses, lilies, poppies, auriculas, and passionflowers are found on examples of penwork datable to the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s (see Pl. XIV).

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In conclusion, it seems likely that penwork owes at least part of its development to the Tunbridge ware industry, which also supplied many of the basic boxes, tea caddies, and other "fancy articles" to be decorated by amateur artists. The dating of penwork is somewhat problematic, but recorded inscriptions or dates on individual pieces tend to back up other evidence for favored styles at particular periods. It is important to bear in mind that design fashions changed especially slowly in the noncommercial world of the amateur, and the shapes of tea caddies are a very approximate guide for the painted decoration.

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I am grateful to the following for their help and advice during the preparation of this article: Anne Stevens, Tony Stone, Tim Turner, Sue Daly, Anna Evans, Joseph O'Kelly, Garry Batt, Les Curtis, Michael Wheeler; Ian C. Beavis and Katrina Burton (Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery, Tunbridge Wells, England); Rosemary Crill, Amin Jaffer, and Rachel Lloyd (Victoria and Albert Museum, London); Andrew Renton (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff); Helen Rowles (Norwich Museums and Art Galleries, England); and Cheryl Williams (Wolverhampton Art Gallery, England).

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(1) See Amin Jaffer, "Ivory-inlaid and veneered furniture of Vizagapatam, India, 1700-1825," The Magazine ANTIQUES, vol. 159, no. 2 (February 2001), pp. 342-349.

(2) Amin Jaffer, Furniture from British India and Ceylon: A Catalogue of the Collections in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum (V and A Publications, London, and Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, 2001), p. 206.

(3) See, for example, The Hand-book of Useful and Ornamental Amusements and Accomplishments by a Lady (London, 1845), p. 157.

(4) The childhood home of Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) in Wellington, New Zealand, has on display a painted cottage box lined with pink paper and containing a collection of dolls for a doll's house.

(5) See Brian Austen, "English spa souvenirs: The Tunbridge ware industry to about 1830," The Magazine ANTIQUES, vol. 147, no. 6 (June 1995), pp. 894-901.

(6) Sir Ambrose Heal, The London Furniture Makers from the Restoration to the Victorian Era, 1660-1840 (1953; reprint Dover, New York, 1972), pp. 2, 4, 39, 41, 132, 134.

(7) Brian Austen, Tunbridge Ware and Related European Decorative Woodwares: Killarney, Spa, Sorrento (1989; new ed. Foulsham, London, 2001), p. 23.