Dish

This creamware dish speaks to the strong place of tradition within the fast changing ceramic technologies of eighteenth-century England. Although the form and decoration of the dish are typical of the salt-glaze stoneware made in the Staffordshire region until the 1760s, this example is made of creamware, a refined white earthenware that only gained popularity in the second half of the eighteenth century. Even as Staffordshire potteries experimented with new ceramic bodies, they continued to adopt older models and decorative motifs well into the nineteenth century.

Credit: Robert A. Ellison Jr. Collection, Gift of Robert A. Ellison Jr., 2014