WHAT IS HISTORICAL STAFFORDSHIRE?

Historical Staffordshire refers to a special kind of transferware that was produced in the Staffordshire District of England as early as 1790 by one of the early fathers of British pottery production, namely Enoch Wood.

VIEWS OF LONDON-THE BANK, C. 1845

VIEWS OF LONDON-THE ROYAL EXCHANGE

Many of his competitors at the time, by 1800-1830, were now producing Historical Staffordshire Transferware. Historical Staffordshire Transferware always illustrated specific scenes of buildings, political figures, war battles and city scenes.

This means that the views are actual typographical views of real places, events e.g. battle scenes or famous people in history. These kinds of transferware scenes were made for export to the colonies, known as Canada after the Confederation in 1867, and also to the the United States of America as a means of educating the public what the rest of the world looked liked.Therefore the potters figured one way of communicating, how the rest of the world looked at the time, would be to transfer scenes on china and ship them abroad.

Canadian Views on china in the 1840’s period. Another would be that of the Davenport factory that transferred onto pearlware six major views of Montreal in the 1830’s, taken from Robert Auchmuty Sproule’s watercolors depicting Views of Montréal. What wonderful watercolors and fabulous rare scenes that were transferred onto a pearlware medium in blue and white in 1830! Robert Sproule first published these scenes Nov. 1829.

We have Three Major Categories of Historical China: (1) American Views, (2) British Views, and (3) Canadian Views. There are other views as well depicting the Middle East which were transferred by other British potters at the time e.g. Ralph Hall's "Carmanian Series & Indian Sporting Series."

The very first Historical China Views were produced in a very intense dark inky blue which some dealers call flow blue. Technically this first dark inky blue was not called flow blue rather Historical Blue which was produced from 1800-1820. One such example would be the early Enoch Wood 1790-1820 period; another would be Ralph Hall, and yet another would be John & Ralph Stevenson.

Afterwards, Ridgways produced their pale blue transfer views, namely Ridgways' "Beauties of America". As we came into the 1840’s period colors were that of dark brown, green, pink and polychrome scenes. Whatever! They are all fantastic irrespective of color and deserve great respect and command to be acquired by connoisseur collectors and museums. Such items as these are not in great abundance and are not just aimlessly floating around. Availability is diminishing as the years go by; and what is made available is steadily increasing price wise. Such pieces are an excellent investment and hold strong market value and will continue to escalate in value.

These two pieces are truly great pieces for your historical collection! Quite rare!