GAUDY DUTCH Helmet Pitcher Antique perfect large 6

Pricing & History

Sold for
Start Free Trial or Sign In to see what it's worth.
Sold Date
Source eBay

GAUDY DUTCH helmet pitcher, 6inches tall, no chips, cracks. Almost microscopic bits of paint missing, nothing that you can see without trying. I cannot tell which pattern this is, t are 8 or 10 patterns. Someone will know and tell me, please. A little about GAUDY DUTCH, which is preferable to GAUDY WELSH, as follows, and I don't know the website, it was not titled: Some info on antique dishes. The skill with which the English potters of Staffordshire hunted markets for their wares commands respect. During the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth centuries, they annexed the American market; competed strongly for the trade of the Baltic cities; and had partners resident in some of the principal South American cities. Most especially, they knew their American trade and realized that in the hinterland, lying to the west of Philadelphia, t was a racial group that demanded something more colourful than the blue-and-white, transfer-printed antique dishes that so pleased the rest of the country. They may not have known that these farmers, chiefly found in five counties, were descendants of emigrants from the Counties Palatine of the Rhine Valley, but the Staffordshire potters sensed a market and a strong demand for vividly decorated dishes. Judging from the amount that has survived, this specially designed earthenware must have come out of the Staffordshire kilns in astonishingly large quantities during the twenty-five or thirty years of its manufacture. Today, well over a century later, practically no antique dealer in the German section of Pennsylvania is without a reasonable assortment, when possible, of what the trade and collectors, for want of a better name, know as "Gaudy Dutch." With freehand decoration executed in cobalt blue, apple green, rust red, and lemon yellow on a typically Staffordshire white bisque (the blue an under glaze colour, and the others over glaze), the designs of this ware are so robust that they should not be ignored. Nevertheless, books on English potteries, and particularly on the products of Staffordshire, are mute regarding them. Yet, the ware shown in such museums as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Pennsylvania Museum of Art in Philadelphia, as part of their displays of the folk arts of this racial group, clearly certifies that Gaudy Dutch is a recognized variety of the earthenware made for the American market. And lack of information about it in the standard books on the general subject is in itself a lure. Because practically all the pieces that one finds of this ware are unmarked, the only way to identify it is by comparison with other types of known origin. This is easy, for all pieces of Gaudy Dutch feel and weigh, when held in the hand, precisely like clearly marked specimens of the Staffordshire transfer wares of the early years. They are like the delicate, light pieces characteristic of the years when the best blue was being produced rather than the heavy, clumsy ones of the period after ironstone ware was introduced. The glaze also proclaims Gaudy Dutch as a Staffordshire product, as do the shape and modeling of the handleless cups, the deep, almost bowl like saucers, the teapots, and other pieces. A maker's name is found once in about a hundred pieces, and that name is Riley, impressed into the bisque before firing. A copy of the map reproduced in Wedgwood's Staffordshire Pottery and Its History shows that John and Richard Riley had a pottery on Nile Street, Burslem, in 1800. From this meager bit of information, we pass to other books of English potters' marks and find that the partnership continued as late as 1827 and that toward the dose, its wares were marked either Riley's Semi-China (enclosed in a belt and buckle) or just Riley's Semi-Stone China. Since Gaudy Dutch, when marked, bears only the impressed word "Riley," it is obvious that it was made in the early days of the partnership, before they had begun to qualify what they made either as semi-china or semi-... read more

Items in the Price Guide are obtained exclusively from licensors and partners solely for our members’ research needs.

Flag item for content or copyright

If this item contains incorrect or inappropriate information please contact us here to flag it for review.

If you are the originator/copyright holder of this photo/item and would prefer it be excluded from our community, contact us here for removal.