Ceramics: 400 Years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces

(Hardback)

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Description

The aim of this publication is to introduce the rich and varied ceramics in the National Trust's vast and encyclopaedic collection, numbering approximately 75,000 artefacts, housed in 250 historic properties in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. One hundred key pieces have been selected from this rich treasure trove, each contributing to our knowledge of ceramic patronage and history, revealing the very personal stories of ownership, display, taste and consumption. The selection includes the following Continental wares: 'Red-figure' wares; Italian armorial tableware; Dutch Delft from the Greek A factory, owned by Adrianus Kocx; Chinese Kraak ware; Dehua ware; Japanese Kakiemon-style and Imari-style tableware and garnitures; Meissen table sculpture by Johann Joachim Kandler; tableware attributed to Adam Friedrich von Lowenfinck; Castelli faience from the Grue workshop and wares from the following porcelain manufactories: Doccia; Vienna; Vincennes; Svres; Dihl and Feulliet. English pottery and porcelain includes delftware; salt-glazed stoneware; creamware; Wedgwood Black Basalt and Etruscan ware; Chelsea, Bow, Worcester and Derby porcelain; Minton China; De Morgan, and Martin ware. From the Americas, the selection includes Pueblo ware. Many are published for the first time, sometimes illustrated in their original interiors. Collectively, the selection surveys patterns of ceramic collecting by the British aristocracy and gentry over a four hundred year period.

Reviews

This thoroughly-researched volume showcases 100 masterpieces selected from the vast collections of the National Trust. Novel and noteworthy in her approach, Ferguson has arranged the book, not by the conventions of material, place of origin or date, but by the time these objects began to appear in British households. In doing so, the author has created a book that is as much about history of taste, privilege, pride of possession and preservation as it is about the history and development of ceramics. This publication offers a bounty of new scholarship and is an engaging read. Without doubt, this volume represents the best of ceramic scholarship and is destined to find a prized place on the bookshelves of nearly all ceramic collectors, curators and scholars.--American Ceramic Circle Book Award, 2017, americanceramiccircle.org

Author Bio

Patricia F. Ferguson is an external adviser on ceramics to The National Trust, having researched their collections since 2003 and is a consulting curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. She has an MA from SOAS, University of London, where she studied Chinese, Japanese and Safavid ceramics. At the George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto, she redisplayed the European galleries, curated 'Containers of Beauty: the Art of Floral Display' and 'Your Presence is requested: the Art of Dining in eighteenth-century Europe', and was author of Cobalt Treasures: The Robert Murray Bell and Ann Walker Bell Collection of Chinese Blue and White Porcelain (2003).