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Avocado toast
- willa
- Apr 11
- 2 min read
For a vegetarian like me, avocado toast is a favourite. Avocado green is a colour that we don't see often in antique British porcelain, so when this Spode creamware dessert service came my way, I was incredibly excited!
This stunning service was made around the year 1814 and is decorated with pattern 2147, which is called the Willis pattern. The pattern is an imitation of an original Chinese design from the Yongzheng period (1723-1735) with beautiful peonies and prunus blossom growing near some rocks, with more flowers in the rim. It serves eight and consists of three serving dishes, a charming bread basket with overhead handle, a fruit compote tureen with cover on a stand that comes with a pierced ladle, and eight plates.
The service is not made of porcelain, but of creamware, a softer and cheaper earthenware that is, however, very suitable to this type of Chinoiserie decoration. This would have made the service more affordable at the time; porcelain was still a novelty, and therefore extremely expensive.
Amazingly, all pieces are in great condition. True, there is some wear to the pattern; obviously the dishes have been lovingly used for many years. The glaze has also crazed, as it always does on pearlware. But there is no damage whatsoever, which is all the more amazing when you realise how much less robust creamware is compared to porcelain.
Blue on white decorations, which had been were done in East Asia for many centuries, were made popular in the West by the Dutch Delftware potters in the 17th Century. In about 1800, Spode created a transfer printing process that could mass produce beautifully decorated blue and white wares, making this a very common and desired choice of tableware for the two centuries to come. Potters all over Britain quickly started to make use of this new technology and copied the famous Spode patterns.
Once the blue on white transfers had caught on, Spode started to print in colour; mostly printing in one colour on top of a ground colour (in this case: light blue on avocado green) and then filling in the other colours by hand. This way, they could offer wonderfully colourful dinner services at a much lower cost, as they needed only a skilled engraver for the plate that provided the outline of the image, and the transferring and colouring could be done by less skilled people. These were often women and apprenticed teenage children.
This service has a simple, elegant Regency shape. It includes some rare items: a charming bread basket with an overhead handle, and a sauce tureen with a cover on a stand, including a perforated ladle that has survived in perfect condition.
A picture of this pattern can be found in colour plate IX of Leonard Whiter's book "Spode".
Where to find things
You can find this service here, and all my dinner and dessert services are here. You can find all my available stock here. If you always want to see the latest additions, follow me on Instagram... I post pictures and a story several times a week.
Happy weekend everyone, and have some avocado toast! 🍈🍈
This week's treasures:
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