Display dish with a cavalier and portrait medallions
The circular dish, painted on a pale ochre ground in light and dark brown slip, is decorated with a central male figure who holds a sword in each of his upraised arms. His head is flanked by two stylized foliate designs; on either side of his body is an oval enclosing a crowned female head. The charger is signed Ralph Toft 1677 in a rectangular cartouche along the bottom rim, while the remainder of the rim is decorated with a trellis pattern executed in light and dark brown slip.
This creamware dish speaks to the changing ceramic technologies of eighteenth-century England. Both the form and decoration of the dish are highly typical of salt-glaze stoneware production of the 1760s, but this example is made of creamware, a type of refined white earthenware that gained enormous popularity in the second half of the eighteenth century. Thus, the dish represents an instance of a new ceramic body being used to replicate a model commonly associated with a different ceramic type. The dish complements other salt-glazed stoneware dishes of related design (such as 34.165.186) in the Museum’s collection.
This creamware dish speaks to the changing ceramic technologies of eighteenth-century England. Both the form and decoration of the dish are highly typical of salt-glaze stoneware production of the 1760s, but this example is made of creamware, a type of refined white earthenware that gained enormous popularity in the second half of the eighteenth century. Thus, the dish represents an instance of a new ceramic body being used to replicate a model commonly associated with a different ceramic type. The dish complements other salt-glazed stoneware dishes of related design (such as 34.165.186) in the Museum’s collection.
Artwork Details
- Title: Display dish with a cavalier and portrait medallions
- Maker: Ralph Toft (British, active ca. 17th century)
- Date: 1677
- Culture: British, Staffordshire
- Medium: Slip-decorated earthenware
- Dimensions: Overall (confirmed): 2 1/2 × 17 1/4 × 17 in. (6.4 × 43.8 × 43.2 cm)
- Classification: Ceramics-Pottery
- Credit Line: Robert A. Ellison Jr. Collection, Gift of Robert A. Ellison Jr., 2014
- Object Number: 2014.712.5
- Curatorial Department: European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
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Thomas Toft
ca. 1680
John Flaxman
Josiah Wedgwood and Sons
ca. 1782–90
probably British, Staffordshire
late 17th–early 18th century
William Greatbach
1770–82
British, Staffordshire
ca. 1760
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