Earthenwares for the table - collecting and reproductions for daily use - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2000 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

As Michael Archer relates in his superb, monumental catalogue of the delftware in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, collectors discovered the charm of English delft and other tin-glazed earthenwares as early as the end of the eighteenth century, not terribly long after the delftware industry succumbed to competition from other types of pottery.

In 1784 two pieces of delftware were recorded among the furnishings of the China Room in Horace Walpole's famous countryseat, Strawberry Hill. Even Queen Charlotte noted after her visit to Cothele, a medieval manor house in Cornwall, that in the house there were dessert plates of "Old Delph of a very large Size." Since many pieces of English delftware are dated, they have long been held in particularly high regard by antiquarians and collectors.

Tin-glazed earthenwares were imported into England from the Mediterranean in the thirteenth century, and possibly earlier. During the next century Venetian ships, known as Flanders galleys, were bringing shipments of these wares to England twice a year Documents show that by 1628 the ceramics they offloaded had come to be known as galleywares. Soon Delf or Delft were terms used interchangeably to describe wares imported from the Netherlands as well as examples made in England in imitation of them. As Archer has been able to extrapolate, the usage was fairly arbitrary, for the layman of the period could not always distinguish between domestic and imported wares.

During the seventeenth century tin-glazed earthenwares were available in such quantities that only pewter was less expensive, and by the mid-eighteenth century the middle class could afford these earthenwares for everyday use. On this side of the Atlantic, the colonists were using large quantities of delftware imported from England until creamware became popular in the 1760s. Delftware was largely a memory by 1840.

These earthenwares, which are today valuable antiques and inherently fragile, are inappropriate for everyday use. However, the reproductions made by Michelle Erickson are suitable for use at table. They are the product of traditional potting, glazing, and decorating techniques. She has made pieces for institutions, such as the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, the United States National Park Service, and Parks Canada. Her reproductions are on view at Period Designs, a shop in Yorktown, Virginia, of which she is a partner (and on their Web site: www.perioddesigns.com). She will also take commissions ranging from single pieces to entire dinner services.