Aesop's fables on English ceramics

Magazine Antiques, June, 1994 by Leslie B. Grigsby

It would be impossible to discuss in a single article all the eighteenth-century English ceramic objects that were inspired in shape or decoration by book illustrations of Aesop's fables. I will focus here on the earthenwares and stonewares inspired by these moralistic tales, which had become well-known to the British people through centuries of publications.

The earliest known fables date from the eighth century B.C. Aesop is said to have been a Phygian slave who lived in greece in the sixth century B.C. and eventually won his freedom, in part through his skill at helping settle disputes by telling fables. The first known written version of his fables is the Aesopia, composed in the fourth century by the Athenian orator Demetrius Phalerus. Several versions were published on the Continent in the third and fourth quarters of the fifteenth century, and William Caxton (c. 1422-1491) published the first English version, The Book of the Subtyl Historyes and Fables of Esop in Westminster in 1484.(1) In the following centuries the fables were revised and added to for publication in poetry and prose in several languages.

At first studied as models and cautions for good behavior for all members of society, Aesop's fables gradually evolved into educational tales primarily directed at children. By the eighteenth century fables were respected as excellent and easily understood models of morality. Occasionally they were used to publicize political opinions, with the authors somewhat protected by the anonymity of using caricatures.(2)

Among the most often reproduced images from Aesop's fables are those relating to "The Fox and the Stork" (see Fig. 2), sometimes called "The Fox and the Crane." As translated by J. Morisson in 1677, the fable recounts how

The Fox provides a Feast, invites a Crane, Who soon accepts to show him no disdane: The Dish was flat, so liquid was the meat, That th'Crane must fast, Reynard [the fox] alone must eat....

This mutual Love was soon return'd again, Reynard's invited by his Friend the Crane. The Meat's brought in a Jug, the Mouth's so strait, Poor Reynard must go home to lick his Plate.(3)

Images associated with this fable have been popular since antiquity(4) and appear in many published forms, including Francis Barlow's widely read Aesop's Fables, with His Life: in English, French and Latin..., first published in London in 1666 with illustrations after Barlow's own delicately executed designs (see Figs. 1, 3).(5) Many of Barlow's illustrations, including the one for "The Fox and the Stork," were partially or wholly copied in Samuel Croxall's Fables of Aesop, and Others..., first issued in 1722 with metal cuts by Elisha Kirkall.(6) These illustrations in turn served as the primary source for fable decoration on many English ceramics, especially for designs printed on delftware tiles (see Pls. IIa-e, IV).

[CHART OMITTED]

The relief decoration on the unusual creamware tile in Plate VI is derived from "The Fox and the Stork," although the specific design has yet to be linked to a particular published illustration.(7) A fragment of a similar relief tile, in biscuit earthenware, was excavated among kiln waste at the factory site of Thomas Whieldon at Fenton Vivian, Staffordshire,(8) as were biscuit tile wasters depicting a similar stork with a "duck fountain" in place of the fox.(9) Fragments of green-glazed creamware tiles bearing the same relief design were unearthed among factory waste from the William Greatbatch (1735?-1813) site at Lower Lane, Fenton, Staffordshire, from a context of about 1762 to 1765.(10)

Somewhat stylized reliefs of the stork eating from the bottle and the fox eating from the dish, each with the opposing animal looking on, appear on the narrow sides of the unusual creamware tea canister shown in Plate V. Similar relief motifs appear on a rectangular tea canister inscribed "BOHEA" for the type of tea it contained.(11)

Quite small renditions of the stork eating from the vase appear among a broad range of relief motifs decorating a group of white salt-glazed stoneware tea and coffee wares thought to have been made in Staffordshire in the 1740's and 1750's. A tiny version appears along with other fable subjects and unrelated motifs on a blue-dipped coffee or chocolate cup (see P1. IIIb, upper right).

Perhaps another variation of "The Fox and the Stork" theme is represented by late eighteenth-century creamware and pearl ware sauceboats in which the open-mouthed head of a fox forms the body and the long neck of a bird forms the handle.(12)

The fable of "The Fox and the Stork" also inspired soft-paste porcelain objects, among them a rare figure group in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Probably inspired by the Croxall image, the group is thought to have been made at the Girlin-a-Swing factory (active c. 1749-1753) in London. The Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory produced dishes and teawares bearing painted fable subjects as well as other useful wares and figures representing the same themes.(13) The tiny Chelsea scent bottle shown in Plate I, for example, is comprised of an elegantly modeled fox and stork wrapped around a vase.