Wedgwood Pearlware Nautilus Sauce Tureen, Cover & Stand

Wedgwood Pearlware Nautilus Sauce Tureen, Cover & Stand,
Circa 1790

The Wedgwood pearlware pottery sauce tureen, cover & stand is …
Wedgwood Pearlware Nautilus Sauce Tureen, Cover & Stand,
Circa 1790

The Wedgwood pearlware pottery sauce tureen, cover & stand is painted in shades of pink and yellow.  The yellow is a very rare colour to find.  The tureen is made in the form of a scallop shell with the foot of the tureen sitting in an indentation with a seaweed surround.  The finial is in the form of a worm cast.

Dimensions: 7 inches high x 9 1/4 inches wide x 6 inches deep (17.78 cm high x 23.50 cm wide x 15.24 cm)

Reference: Wedgwood: Its Competitors & Imitators 1800-1830, Wedgwood International Seminar, page 9, Plate X for a nautilus centrepiece

The Dwight and Lucille Beeson Wedgwood Collection at the Birmingham Museum of Art, page 279 for various pieces from a Nautilus dessert service. On page 161 is a discussion of the “Nautilus Service with a colour plate (#148) illustrating the centrepiece and stand in colours similar to this one and described as white ware with pink, yellow, orange and pale brown underglaze decoration, circa 1815.

The chapter reads, “An amateur conchologist, Joshua Wedgwood I confessed in a letter to Bently on September 15, 1778:

I have got my face over a shell drawer, & find my self in imminent danger of becoming a connoisseur. you can scarcely conceive the progress I have made in a month or two in the epp & very elaborate science of shell fancying. Having arranged my whole collection in the most systematic manner & studied them with the nicest attention, I can tell you, at sight, …distinctions which you,..would not understand & might therefore under value. But this study, alass, like every other extension of the human mind, as it multiplies the avenues to our enjoyments discloses new sources of wants & anxieties, & at this present writing..a fine addition.. would make me the happiest of chonchiologists.

The first pieces of Wedgwood’s “Nautilus” service appeared in about 1790, and a copy of his original drawing for a tureen and stand and eight plates, the designs of which are correctly identified according to the terms used in conchology and titled “Wreathed Shell Dessert Coloured” is to be found in Wedgwood’s pattern book and bears an 1802 watermark.

(Ref: NY9701-xlim)