Antique Victorian aesthetic Wedgwood polychrome clobbering pottery Plate C.1881

An attractive antique Victorian aesthetic period Wedgwood & Co pottery Plate with polychrome clobbering (hand-painted highlights) in the Louise pattern, which was introduced in 1881.

Circa 1881+

Good overall antique condition but with a rim chip – please view images

10 inches (25.5cm) dia approx

Wedgwood & Co (Ltd) / Enoch Wedgwood (Tunstall) Ltd

Safe UK shipping is included in the price, and international shipping is at cost

NOTE:
The ware of Wedgwood & Co are sometimes confused with those of Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd. However the inclusion of “& Co” or “& Co Ltd” in the name always differentiates between the two companies as Josiah Wedgwood never used “& Co”.

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Enoch Wedgwood (a distant cousin of Josiah Wedgwood) became a partner in Podmore, Walker & Co. in 1835 and in 1856 the business was renamed Podmore, Walker, Wedgwood & Co.

Following the death of Thomas Podmore in 1860, Enoch Wedgwood inherited shares in the interests of the business left to him by Podmore, the partnership was dissolved and became Wedgwood & Co.

Enoch Wedgwood took his younger brother Jabez into partnership.

By the 1870’s the company was employing between 600 and 700 people.

Enoch died in 1879 and was succeeded by his sons Edmund and Alfred Enoch Wedgwood who ran the business until 1900 when family control ceased.

The company did not have the same drive under the two sons and in 1890 Hollinshead and Kirkham took over the Unicorn Works.

In 1900 the firm became a limited company and effective control passed out of the hands of the Wedgwood family. The new money and management put new life into the company and up to 1950 great efforts were put into regaining their former markets, largely by playing to the company’s strengths in producing high quality goods.

Wedgwood & Co remained open during the Second World War under the Wartime Concentration Scheme – they were permitted to produce undecorated domestic ware. They also produced canteen ware for the British armed forces.

In June 1945 Wedgwood & Co were granted a licence to produce ‘fancies’ for the home market.

In 1965 the company was sold to Semart Importing Co. based in New Jersey, USA and refloated as Enoch Wedgwood (Tunstall) Ltd. Semart was an importer of tableware and at the same time as buying Wedgwood & Co. purchased Crown Staffordshire China Co.

In 1969 Enoch Wedgwood (Tunstall) Ltd. purchased the Furnivals name together with the rights to a number of patterns which were marked under the Furnivals name.

In order to expand production facilities the business of A G Richardson was purchased in 1974. Although A G Richardson ceased to exist, the use of their Crown Ducal name and some patterns was continued by Enoch Wedgwood for a few years.

In 1980 Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd (who, up to this point had nothing to do with Wedgwood & Co.) purchased Enoch Wedgwood and it operated within the Wedgwood Group as the ‘Unicorn Pottery’.

Polychrome Clobbering

‘Clobbering’ is usually understood as when polychrome ‘enhancement’ is applied over an existing and complete underglaze blue motif and, a not intended part of the original design, usually to make an item more saleable. This term is today used on all Chinese porcelain to which an enamel decoration has been added in Europe. The original meaning was however when enamels was added as a repair to hide a defect, and should be distinguished from Amsterdam Bont, German Hausmalerei, (German: “home painting”). English Gilding and I think, China Burners repairs.

A western traditionally derogative name referring to Chinese export porcelain that has got its original underglaze blue and white decoration added onto in Europe with a later colored enamel decoration. The secondary decoration were sometimes limited to only a new or additional borders, sometimes rough foliage, figures, animals, birds or full landscapes or sceneries, sometimes adding to the old decoration, sometimes randomly filling all available space and sometimes just disregarding the old underglaze blue and white decoration as if it wasn’t there.

Pieces with the least merits seem to have been produced in London during the second quarter of the nineteenth century when apparently a great deal of indifferent and unsellable Chinese blue and white 18th century left over stock were embellished with anything that was colorful.

The practice seems to have originated in Holland but spread over Europe with the availability of items to decorate. This kind of work was extensively done both in Holland and in England during the 18th and early 19th century. The English establishments that offered this service were known as China burners and the enameling was referred to as that the colors was “burnt in and impossible to remove”. Some of these “China burners” also seemed to have offered porcelain repairs where broken pieces was ceramically mended in a re-glazing process.

Another praxis that needs to be considered in this, was a related process where damaged or second rate porcelain was improved or mended by hiding the flaws under newly added decorative elements such as random enameled flowers or insects. This could indeed be a literally correct use of the word clobbering as compared to what was done to broken shoes.

By the end of the 19th century clobber was found in the English language (Oxford English Dictionary) together with clabber, while referring to “a paste used by the shoemakers to patch holes”, which is not an unlikely origin

The word “Clobbered” could based on this, be understood as patched up or repaired.