SILVER LUSTRE TEAPOT.
Of the silver or platinum lustre very many fine examples exist, and it is extremely popular owing to its similitude to old English silver or plate. The sugar bowl we reproduce, with beaded pattern and fluted design, is quite in the style of the Sheffield plate of the Georgian period. Of the three silver lustre cream jugs, that in the extreme right is of the same design, while the other two show at a glance the beauty of form that silver lustre in its best period reached.
Other varieties of this silver lustre are quite plain, as in the teapot we reproduce ([p. 229]), which is an example of a slightly later period. This is a fine specimen of the unornamented variety of silver lustre which is undistinguishable from silver. In fact the highly burnished surface of such a teapot as this cannot be obtained on silver, the lustre is of a richer and deeper quality. Alas! it possesses the dangerous property of dissolving, like a fairy gift, into nothingness. Elfin gold will turn into a circle of whirring, dancing, mocking leaves, and if your wondrous lustre teapot slips to the ground, it lies a heap of brown earthenware fragments.
One word in passing to collectors of this ware. Do not wash your specimens any more than you can help, as warm water has a deleterious effect on the lustre, and tends to make it less brilliant; we recommend our readers to polish their lustre ware with a soft cloth, and we wish them absolute and entire freedom from all mishaps. Treat the ware lovingly and kindly, it will never come again; the potters who made it are dead, the modern imitator is but a poor imitator, fraudulent at heart and feeble in result; if cunning lie in his heart it is not in his finger-tips, for, of a truth, his hand has lost its cunning.
Besides the plain silver lustre, there is a decorated variety which is very handsome, and much sought after. Sometimes the ground is of silver lustre decorated in white, and sometimes the ground is white with an elaborate pattern of foliage, of fruit, or of birds, woven in silver thread. The rarest of this variety is the silver pattern on a canary ground.
SILVER LUSTRE JUG (5 IN. HIGH).
(White Decoration.)
From the Collection of Mr. W. G. Honey.