May Peace and Plenty – Sunderland
May Peace and Plenty
On Our Nation Smile
And Trade with Commerce
Bless the British Isle
On Our Nation Smile
And Trade with Commerce
Bless the British Isle
Dawson & Co, Low Ford Pottery
|
A monochrome rendering of the transfer on a smaller than average, 10cm tall, Dawson creamware mug (compare it with the example below with coloured over-enamels). This transfer c1800 is perhaps the precursor for many of the items on this page. The subject was popular and continued to be reproduced throughout the 19th century, and into the 20th century by Staffordshire potteries (see below).
The transfer is signed on the right 'WC' for Walter Cockburn, who engraved for both Dawson and Phillips & Co at the Sunderland Pottery. |
|
An ovoid jug from the Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums collection, with the Battle of the Nile transfer. The Battle of the Nile was fought in 1798.
This early version of the transfer has printed marks for 'Dawson & Co Low Ford'. The transfer is paired with bridge 4 on the first jug and bridge 10 on the second.
A jug with slightly different enamelling over the transfer, and a nice crisp imprint.
Below, a typical large, 12.8 cm tall, creamware mug with enamels over the transfer. I have not yet recorded one of these mugs with a frog.
Below, the trimmed transfer on a mug with hand-painted flowers and a date inscription for 1815.
Attributed to Dawson & Co, Low Ford Pottery
A monumental punch bowl, 49cm diameter and 23cm high. It has very similar sprigs of flowers to the mug above.
Attributed to Dawson & Co, Low Ford Pottery
A mug with a frog attributed to Dawson.
Phillips & Co, Sunderland Pottery
A Phillips & Co creamware mug with Britannia and the verse, and beneath it another without coloured enamels over the transfer.
The jug below is from the Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums collection, and has a Phillips & Co printed mark under the bridge transfer.
Dixon, Austin & Co, Sunderland Pottery
The transfer appears on a jug with a hand-painted inscription dated 1824. The bridge transfer has the printed mark 'Dixon & Co. Sunderland'. The Dixon, Austin & Co partnership ran from 1818 to 1839. Beneath the jug, a tobacco jar with a trimmed version of the transfer.
Below, a small jug from the 1830s with coloured enamels. The transfer has again been trimmed to fit.
Dixon, Phillips & Co – ship
The Garrison pottery used two impressed marks on these plaques. The 'Dixon, Phillips & Co' surrounding anchor mark appears to have been used on items from pre-1850. The 'Dixon Co' mark was used from about 1850 onwards. The plaque with coloroured over-enamels is likely c1860.
Three jugs with inscriptions from the 1850s. Read more about the two styles of inscription here.
A small jug with a hand-painted anchor under the spout.
A wash ewer with the transfer. There should be a bowl to match, but I haven't recorded one yet. Beneath it, a frog mug with a typical 'Dixon' frog, and a slop bowl with the transfer in the centre.
A bowl with Crimean transfers c1855. Typically the transfers on the outside of the bowl are not decorated with enamels.
The enamels and lustre decoration on this jug suggest a later date, c1860.
Dixon, Phillips & Co – verse
Above a plaque with the later Dixon Co mark from the 1850s. The eel pot or butter dish and jug below are likely earlier and have a crisper imprint of the transfer.
A slop bowl with a distinctive tree-like decoration in pink lustre and the later Dixon Co mark from the 1850s.
The yellow enamels over the transfers on the inside of the bowl perhaps suggest a later date, c1860.
A rare tile with the verse. I haven't recorded tiles with any other Dixon transfers.
Newbottle High Pottery
The Newbottle attribution for this transfer is convoluted, and relates to pottery items donated by descendants of the owners to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Read more here.
For many years I believed that the copper plate moved to Moore's because of the similarity of these brown-bordered plaques (below) to those made by the Wear Pottery in the 1860s. However, recent discovery of a Sunderland Bridge plaque signed by a Newbottle potter, shows these items were more likely made at Newbottle High Pottery.
May Peace and Plenty – Tyneside
Unidentified pottery
A creamware mug, c1815, from an unidentified North East pottery, perhaps Tyneside.
Unidentified Tyne pottery
The decoration of this jug, which appears to have misfired, is similar to that used by Robert Maling. However, I haven't managed to trace these transfers on other items from that pottery. The verse has an anchor above it.
Galloway and Atkinson, Albion Pottery, Newcastle
The short lived partnership of Galloway and Atkinson c1864 at the Albion Pottery (on the Maling's old Ouseburn Bridge site) produced two variations on the subject, which appear on circular and rectangular plaques.
Attributed to Middlesbrough Pottery
I've included a brief diversion South into Yorkshire because of the similarity of the 'Middlesbrough' transfer to the G&A version above.
This transfer is attributed to Middlesbrough on account of a similar rolling pin inscribed 'A present from Middlesbro' (see below).
Photos above and below Hartleys Auctioneers
Attributed to John Carr & Sons, North Shields or Ball's Deptford Pottery
The plaques below have the Albion Pottery transfers. The plaque form below is associated with North Shields. However, it is possible that the Carr plaque mould and the G&A copper plate ended up at Ball's Deptford Pottery, where lustre items continued to be made into the 20th century.
Attributed to Carr and Patton, North Shields
Photo David Lay Auctioneers
A variation of the verse attributed to North Shields.
Attributed to John Carr & Sons, North Shields – plate 1
This version of the transfer appears with both left and right facing ships, and sometimes printed in blue on plaques. The left-facing ship has numerous gulls to the right. Although attributed to John Carr on this page for simplicity's sake, see the Marco Polo page for a link of these transfers with a potter called John Hobson.
A similar monumental jug with an old blacksmith's repair to the handle.
This bowl, although more akin in decoration to the items below, has the 'numerous gulls' version of the transfer. The bowl has an impressed LONDON mark, known to have been used by Carr, amongst other Tyneside potteries.
Attributed to John Carr & Sons, North Shields – plate 2
Photo Ian Holmes
This is the Garrison – Dixon, Phillips & Co – above. The transfer plate was apparently acquired by John Carr (along with others) after the pottery closed in 1865. There are 5 seagulls to the right of the ship. Note also the word and on the second line with the lower case 'd' arching over the whole of the word.
The imprint on the bowl below is faint, but appears to be from the same plate as the jug above. The enamel decoration (clobbering) is consistent across all these North Shields-attributed groups. As is the wavy lustre decoration.
Attributed to John Carr & Sons, North Shields – plate 3
This version is the most similar to the Garrison Pottery version above, but likely comes from a different copper plate. It has clearly delineated clouds, and the word 'and' in the third line of the verse (not an ampersand). The 'd' in the word 'and' does not arch over the whole of the word. Interestingly, in the left version above from the first jug below there are only 4 seagulls to the right, and in the right version, from the second jug, there are 5. This could be the result of re-engraving of the copper plare, or of a wrinkle in the transfer when applied to the curved surface of the first jug.
An eel pot or butter dish with the lower half of the transfer. See another below with the upper half with the ship.
A small pedestal bowl again with the lower half of the transfer.
Attributed to John Carr & Sons, North Shields – plate 4
This version of the transfer has an ampersand in the third line of the verse. It has 5 gulls to the right (NB there is a speckle in the glaze that looks like a 6th gull in the image above!).
This plaque form is attributed to North Shields.
An eel pot or butter dish with the top half of the transfer.
An unmarked bowl with similar lustre decoration to the pot above.
May Peace and Plenty – Staffordshire reproductions
Adams Pottery, Staffordshire – version 1
These Adams items, although around 100 years old and antiques in their own right, are technically reproductions. The yellow enamelling over the sails is reminiscent of late Dixon wares from the 1860s. Dixon did on occasion use similar lustre decoration and made jugs with fluted collars. However, although the May Peace and Plenty transfer is close to the Dixon version, there are only four seagulls to the right on this version. The jug has a ridge running around it, suggesting that it was moulded, rather than turned on a wheel. A second jug shown beneath it with similar decoration.
Adams Pottery, Staffordshire – version 2
On this Adams' version, the ship is flying an American flag. My best guess is that these items were made between 1914 and 1930. See more examples here.
The second jug below has lustre squiggles, very similar in quality to the 'version 1' jug above. Both jugs below are unmarked.
Gray's Pottery
The items below were likely from the 1950s. You can read more about Gray's Pottery here. The rolling pin has just the first two lines of the verse.
