Grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt

The Raven – pen and ink drawing on paper by Rossetti.
ca 1848, V&A, London

It’s that time of year again with Halloween fast approaching that thoughts turn to the bleak and morbid and ravens. Famously, this ‘Grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt’ bird inspired the poem, The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe. A poem which in turn inspired the Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti to draw an intense, slightly creepy illustration.

Ravens also prompted the German sculptor, Ludwig Vordermayer to create the above dramatic ceramic piece for the Heubach factory in Koppelsdorf sometime around 1908. This hard-paste porcelain raven can now be seen lurking on a top shelf within the ceramics display at the V&A Museum.

The amazing genus Corvus gives us a group of birds that the derogatory expression ‘bird brain’ does a gross injustice to. Evidence suggests that crows, rooks, jackdaws and ravens are top of the avian intelligence pecking order. These birds have been observed constructing tools, using bait and even possibly exhibiting self-recognition. As a child I remember being amazed by the size of the ravens at the Tower of London and being bewitched and entranced by the way they stared at me. But this morning I had to make do with a common, but clever crow on my neighbours television aerial.

Wedgwood Fairyland Lustreware – Beautiful & Charming

Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Fairyland Lustreware, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Pots have been objects of cultural expression across many centuries and cultures. Although not as resilient as stone, but less ephemeral than textiles and books, ceramic works have been collected and cherished by all kinds of us. Lustreware, the use of metallic glazes on ceramics, dates from about the ninth century with the earliest surviving examples showing lustre glazes decorating glass vessels.

The Ceramics Department at the V&A Museum in London is always worth a visit and recently I saw these beautiful examples of Wedgwood Fairyland Lustreware. They are the work of one of Wedgwood’s painter/designers called Daisy Makeig-Jones (1881-1945) who joined the firm in 1909. These charming pieces are bone china, printed and painted in underglaze colours with gold and lustre and are thought to date from about 1923.

As with many fine, expensive pieces they are some of the best examples of lustreware which had been popular throughout the nineteenth century following the introduction of pink and white lustreware in 1805 by Josiah Wedgwood & Sons. This spawned a whole number of lesser, but more affordable versions of pottery lustreware.

Eight Staffordshire Lustre Jugs sold by Skinner Auctioneers

Some 150 years later my great-aunt received this version as a wedding gift. A Staffordshire Potteries much diluted version of the pink ‘Moonlight’ lustreware of Wedgwood.

This pink jug has an iridescent sheen created by adding a metallic film over brush marked glazing. It was made by the Kensington Pottery Ltd (1922-61) sometime after 1937 when the company changed their mark from KPH to KPB.

A detailed analysis and discussion of the earliest lustreware techniques can be found at V&A Conservation Journal article