Roger Pomfret
The Diorama Transport Views

Ceramics in America 2005

Full Article
Contents
  • Figure 1
    Figure 1

    Saucer, Straffordshire, ca. 1820s. Pearlware. D. 5 3/4". (Courtesy, Roger Pomfret; photo, Gavin Ashworth.)

  • Figure 2
    Figure 2

    Print from Observations on a General Iron Railway, by Thomas Gray, 5th ed. (London, 1825). Although the pottery engraving represents the locomotive with fair accuracy, the coach is only an approximation, suggesting a second, unrelated print as its source. This would be consistent with the fanciful description attached to the plate illustrated in Arthur Hayden’s Chats on English Earthenware (1909).

  • Figure 3
    Figure 3

    Plate, Staffordshire, ca. 1820s. Pearlware. D. 9 3/4". (Courtesy, Kurt O’Hare; photo, Gavin Ashworth.) The transfer-printed design on this plate depicts a single-funnel steamboat, which is markedly different from the first Fulton steamboat.

  • Figure 4
    Figure 4

    Trip up Loch Lomond, 1825. (Courtesy, Mary Evans Picture Library.) This print by an unknown engraver/publisher depicts the Marian, built by David Napier in 1815, and served as the source for the transfer print depicted in fig. 3.

  • Figure 5
    Figure 5

    Plate, Staffordshire, ca. 1820s. Pearlware. D. 6 7/8". (Courtesy, Weston H. Palmer, Esq.; photo, Gavin Ashworth.) A three-masted sailing ship—traditionally identified as the Cadmus—is in the foreground and a single-funnel steamer is in the left background.

  • Figure 6
    Figure 6

    Antoine Roux, Ship Cadmus, 1822. Watercolor. (Courtesy, Peabody Essex Museum; photo, Mark Sexton.)

  • Figure 7
    Figure 7

    Exterior base of the saucer illustrated in fig. 1, displaying an impressed open hand mark.

  • Figure 8
    Figure 8

    John and Richard Riley, Burslem, Staffordshire, ca. 1820s. Pearlware. Blue printed so-called girl Gardeners pattern with printed “RILEY” flower spray mark and impressed hand. (Courtesy, Dick Henrywood and Dreweatt Neate.)