Chats on English China

by Arthur Hayden

In passing, we mention the celebrated service of Wedgwood made for the Empress Catherine II. of Russia, which took eight years to complete. It consisted of 952 pieces, of which the cost was about £3,000. This splendid service had upwards of 1,200 views of the seats of noblemen and gentlemen in various parts of England. A large service for Queen Charlotte of views in black enamel of palaces and seats of the nobility took three years to execute.

To his celebrated “Jasper” ware, Wedgwood devoted immense and never-ending skill to bring it to its final perfection.

The use to which he put this jasper is well illustrated in his series of beautiful portrait medallions. We reproduce a design of a plaque by Flaxman, representing the hands of France and England being joined together by the god Mercury.

Wedgwood was enabled, by the patronage of noblemen who possessed fine classic examples and gladly lent them to the great potter, to copy some of the finest specimens of the old art of the Greeks. He was thus enabled to produce the celebrated “Dancing Nymphs” and the “Head of Medusa” from Sir William Hamilton’s collection; and to other great collections he was similarly indebted.

In 1787, the collection of the Duchess of Portland came under the hammer. The sale included the celebrated Barberini Vase, which was dug up by order of the Pope Barberini, named Urban VIII., about the first quarter of the seventeenth century. This urn contained the ashes of the Roman Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother, and had been deposited in the earth about the year 235 A.D.

The body of this vase, now known as the Portland Vase, which was composed of glass, is a rich dark blue, approaching black. The snow-white figures which appear on it are in bas-relief. It is a magnificent example of ancient art.

At the sale above alluded to, the Duke of Portland and Wedgwood were contesting hotly for possession of the vase. The price had reached a thousand guineas. At this moment the Duke, crossing to Wedgwood, asked him why he wished to possess the vase, to which the potter replied that he was desirous of copying it. The Duke immediately offered the loan of the piece, and the vase was thus knocked down to the Duke of Portland, and Wedgwood borrowed it from the owner for a twelvemonth.

The subsequent history of the vase is interesting. The Duke of Portland, as one of the trustees of the British Museum, allowed it to be exhibited there. In 1845 a fanatic dashed this priceless gem to pieces with a stone. Owing to the defective state of the law he escaped with a very slight punishment. But so great a sensation did the affair cause that an Act was at once passed by Parliament making similar offences punishable by terms of imprisonment. The pieces of the vase were skilfully joined, but the fractures are still visible, as will be seen from our illustration. It is now in the “Gold medals room” of the British Museum, and by its side is one of the fifty copies which Wedgwood made for subscribers at fifty guineas apiece. The vase itself once changed hands for eighteen hundred guineas, and one of Wedgwood’s copies fetched two hundred and fifteen guineas in 1892.

The body used for this vase was black jasper, a body used on but three other occasions. The figures on it were worked up and cut to the utmost degree of sharpness and finish, by the seal and gem engraver—a striking piece of reproduction. The original moulds are still in existence, and Messrs. Wedgwood still produce copies both in black and in a deep blue ground. But the price is in shillings and not in guineas nowadays.