An authoritative guide to the history and craft of this rare and much sought-after ceramic ware.

"Based around the matchless collections of British ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which curators began to assemble as early as the 1840s, this book charts the story of their development from the simple slipware drinking-vessel of the seventeenth century to the sophisticated enamelled and transfer-printed tableware of the early 1800s. The narrative takes us through successive changes of taste and manners, as British potters assimilated and adapted new, and often disparate, influences from Europe and the Far East. Ceramics, ubiquitous, disposable and quintessentially domestic, tended to reflect social changes quicker than other branches of the applied arts; for example, new fashions in dining and the taking of tea were responsible for major aspects of design and decoration, while the rapid rise of the Staffordshire figure enabled it to become a vehicle for satire, religion, or the commemoration of wildly popular but ephemeral events such as boxing matches and visits from touring menageries." "Keeping carefully chosen pieces, illustrated, at the forefront of his discussion, Robin Hildyard treats the subject variously by material, form, decoration or by broader theme, sometimes cutting across traditional boundaries in order to look behind established myths and the often misleading evidence of what has survived. The methods and history of manufacture are fully explored, from the workshop of the independent village potter to the industrialized nineteenth-century factory struggling with the stormy beginnings of trade unionism. The complex trade in ceramics both at home and abroad, and the transition from utilitarian household object to cherished item in collector's cabinet is also examined, along with the symbiotic relationship between collector and museum. This volume, filling the gap in current ceramic literature between narrower scholarly studies and the opulent catalogues of private collections, presents an expert and yet highly accessible view of a particularly rich seam of British material culture, guiding us from familiar ground into wider and sometimes uncharted territory."--BOOK JACKET.

The great age of European ceramic design began around 1500 and ended in the early 19th century with the introduction of large-scale production of ceramics. In this illustrated history, with nearly 300 color and black and white photos and reproductions, curator Howard Coutts considers the main stylistic trends�Renaissance, Mannerism, Oriental, Rococo, and Neoclassicism�as they were represented in such products as Italian Majolica, Dutch Delftware, Meissen and S�vres porcelain, Staffordshire, and Wedgwood pottery. He pays close attention to changes in eating habits over the period, particularly the layout of a formal dinner, and discusses the development of ceramics as room decoration, the transmission of images via prints, marketing of ceramics and other luxury goods, and the intellectual background to Neoclassicism.

Illustrated catalog of Colonial Williamsburg's slipware collection. This publication examines English slip-decorated earthenwares, many of which have an almost folk-like quality in their naivety of form and decoration.

The collection of British pewter at Colonial Williamsburg is remarkable for its breadth and detail. It illustrates the development of basic forms and types of decoration from the first decades of the seventeenth century through those of the nineteenth, and includes a complementary admixture of American examples, which often exhibit readily identifiable regional and individual preferences. This catalog is divided into sections based on use, including dining wares, drinking vessels, and religious objects. This organization allows for the juxtaposition of related forms and for the appreciation of their chronologies and development. The important Colonial Williamsburg collection that has been formed over the past seventy-five years. It highlights the many purposes pewter served in early American history, assisting in the transfer of culture from Europe and in the shaping of distinctive American attitudes and artifacts, and is also illustrative of the broad distribution of British wares, especially apparent in Virginia and the lower Chesapeake region, where there were relatively few practicing pewterers and where there was a decided dependence on imported pewter.