In the group illustrated ([p. 201]) there is one enamelled jug. The two dishes show another type of plain salt-glaze. The teapot shows incised work on the broad band around it, but no indication of colour. The coffee-pot is the well-known squirrel form, and the dark teapot on left is enamelled in blue by Thomas Littler, and is a rare example.
In colouring the salt-glazed vase in bright turquoise blue and pink and green, with its Oriental design, strongly suggests the enamel work of Limoges (see [p. 209]). It stands in the eighteenth century in the same relationship to the metal enameller as does a modern French factory at Bordeaux, Messrs. Viellard & Cie., whose work in coarse earthenware simulates the cloisonné enamel.
The punch bowl illustrated has a portrait of the Young Pretender. In date it is, of course, not earlier than 1745, the year of the Rebellion in Scotland on behalf of the Pretender, and when his son Charles Edward landed and defeated the royal forces near Edinburgh. This punch bowl tells its story of stirring days, when Jacobites secretly met at night in quiet manor houses and drank a toast to the Stuart claimant. In public by a kind of subtle jest when they were driven to drink the health of "the king," they by a specious mental reservation flourished their glasses over any water on the table, the hidden meaning being "the King—over the water." But here is a punch bowl which was probably brought out for the sworn partisans to drink to the pious memory of the exiled Stuarts. There was always, even when the Stuart cause was a lost one, a tender recollection of "Prince Charlie," the "Young Chevalier." The lilting lines of Bobbie Burns in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, always awaken romantic associations, and bowls such as this were relics of something that had been, and without doubt in its day this same bowl has filled the glasses of a loyal company who drank the health of his Gracious Majesty George the Third.
As we have pointed out in the introductory note there are many monuments in clay on the collector's shelf which punctuate the sonorous phrases of the historian. Such pieces are exceptionally interesting in aiding the reflective mind to recreate the events of a former day which touched the life roots of the nation.
PRICES.