Ceramic Umbrella Stand

Years ago, RR inherited a tall pottery umbrella stand which was shattered in a recent wildfire; she had discovered two shards that, when put together like pieces of a puzzle, read RN 288102 and RN 284106. A trace of a word is above these marks, “Melbou-” possibly for Melbourne, more than likely the pattern name. With just these two shards and RR’s sketch, she asked if I could estimate the value. 

The ‘RN’ (Registered Number) refers to the British practice of registering ceramics from the mid-19th to early 20th century; you will often find these marks inside a cryptic diamond with letters and numbers in all four corners. In the very late 19th century, the diamond shape was retired, and the registration number was a single line or two. (Two if both the design and shape were registered separately.) 

British pottery was registered from 1839 – 1964 and entered into massive books; those unwieldy volumes contained the number, the owner of the design, and the quantity made; they are held at the National Archives at Kew, Richmond, Surrey. If you know the number, you know the date.

The number on RR’s vessel indicates its date of creation as 1896 – 1897. This date is a clue to its style, along with RR’s sketch of the shape of the vessel, which is a tapered trumpet shape with a flared rim – a style associated with Japanese porcelain. A tiny portion of the remaining shards show a design of blue: blue and white ceramics were prevalent in late 19th century England.

The vessel, in a shape reminiscent of Japanese porcelain, was likely designed in the style of the late 19th century Aesthetic Movement. The Aesthetic Movement was an era of design colored by Japanese shapes, patterns, and symbols, imitating Japanese forms of porcelain, and painting those forms with sunflowers, prunus blossoms, chrysanthemums, magnolias, hawthorn buds, and exotic birds, such as the peacock. 

Japan had been “opened” after 200 years of isolation by the American Commodore Perry in 1853. Perry had sailed his four steel ships into the harbor at Tokyo Bay, seeking to reinvigorate trade between Japan and the Western world. By 1870, Japanese woodcuts had entered the drawing rooms of many fashionable collectors, as had significant Japanese porcelain and furniture. Thus, British designers co-opted Japanese shapes and designs into traditional British ceramic objects, such as RR’s umbrella stand. 

Both Britain and the U.S. produced Aesthetic Movement design, rooted in Asian aesthetics in the late 19th century, as Japan experienced the West’s colonization, expansionism, capitalism, and nationalism.

The shards indicate the type of ceramic medium; a salt glazed stoneware with a thick glaze. That distinctive glaze is produced by vaporizing common salt in the fire of the kiln, so the sodium reacts with the silicates of the stoneware to produce a non-porous glaze. The earliest examples of salt glazed stoneware date to 14th century Germany. 

The most popular of all salt glazed stoneware in the Aesthetic Movement taste was created by Doulton and Co. together with the Lambert School of Art, a liaison begun in 1863. Together, the students and designers were acclaimed for their ceramics at major International Exhibitions such as The Philadelphia World’s Fair of 1886 and the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. So popular was Doulton’s Lambeth and Burslem wares that the Doulton factory employed 370 shapers and designers, from the late 1890s to Queen Victoria’s death in 1901. Her death ushered in a new generation of designers, who moved away from the Aesthetic tradition.

The Aesthetic Movement spanned decorative art and literature as an elitist movement of “art for art’s sake” from the 1870s to 1901. Two giants of the style, one in art, and one in literature, were the pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Oscar Wilde, whose trial for alleged homosexual acts in 1895 marked the beginning of the end of the Aesthetic Movement. It was Wilde who said, “I find it hard to live up to my blue and white porcelain.’’ He found it difficult to live a life dedicated to beauty in such as world as ours. Aesthetes like Wilde were of the educated monied upper class, believing that objects seen daily should be beautiful – and they need not have a utilitarian purpose. 

The assumptions I am making about RR’s umbrella stand are as follows: that it was created from 1896-7, that it was salt glazed stoneware, that it was designed in the Doulton factory in conjunction with the Lamberth School of Art. If those assumptions are correct, the value of the piece was $800-$1,200.