Let's do Derby
- willa
- May 3
- 3 min read
This week I sold a wonderful tea service made by Derby in about 1785, which always stuns me in its shocking modernity; it could have been a piece of Art Deco from the 1930s! Simultaneously, after the very successful sale from a few weeks ago, I was clearing my shelves and realised I still had a few extras from this service, so I am now starting to put them up in the shop for anyone who wants to own a piece of this intriguing pattern.
This pattern is called "artichoke" and you can see why; the underside of the cups and the outer rims of the saucers are shaped like the outside of an artichoke, picked off in gilt. The colour - well what to say! Can you get any brighter than this? Dervby made different versions of this pattern: pink, turquoise like this one, and teal green.
Derby was good at this bright turquoise colour; I have a few dishes in a very similar shade, painted with roses by the famous William Billingsley. It was a difficult colour to make at the time, and isn't completely even, which in my eyes adds to their charm.
The Derby factory started making teaware in the 1770s and was up against stiff competition from Worcester, who made more robust wares as they used soap stone in their porcelain, which deals better with boiling water because of its great plasticity. Derby's porcelain was more fragile, and there are some interesting letters saved in the Derby Museum archive of clients who demanded a refund because their teapots cracked at the first use! That wouldn't have happened to a Worcester pot.
Derby, however, arguably had the more interesting designers and decorators. Some of their painters were true artists (see some of my blogs about them here, here and here), and this artichoke design is a wonderful piece of daring design, bringing beauty to the eye together with a three-dimensional pleasure of holding a sculpted item in your hands.
And the very fine porcelain? That makes it such a delight, even though Derby porcelain was always a bit too fragile for teaware - and therefore the Derby teaware of the 18thC is quite rare now. From this particular service, the cups and saucers are actually quite robust because they are so small; it's a perfect balance between size and thinness. The teapot of the service I just sold is wonderfully large and robust, and its perfectly globular form naturally makes it strong - they must have listened to the complaints of their clients.
I have several tea bowls and coffee cups sitting here on my shelf, and one of each are currently up in the shop. Please ask me if you missed out, or if you want several of them!
Where to find things
You can find the Derby artichoke cups here, and all my Derby items 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 now that I think about it, here in the Northern Hemisphere it's almost artichoke time!
credit: Elise Bauer
This week's treasures:
