teapot(or punch pot);
brooch
- Museum number
- 1923,0215.11.CR
- Description
-
Teapot or punch pot; porcelain; globular body; plain spout and handle; low domed cover with flower knop; scale-blue ground with panels, framed in gilt rococo borders, and painted in colours and gold in Old Japan style; gold cartouche under spout, inscribed.
Also a gold brooch in form of number 45 with legend; celebrates publication of number 45 of the 'North Briton'.
- Production date
- 1763-1770 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 2 centimetres (brooch)
-
Height: 14.50 centimetres (teapot)
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- Text from Dawson 2007:
This globular, thrown, punch pot with its applied loop handle is painted with a blue scale pattern under the glaze and with reserved shaped panels of Japanese-style flowers including chrysanthemums and a banded hedge. The panels are outlined with gilt scroll patterns that are typical of the gilding associated with the Worcester factory itself.
The inscription 'No 45' refers to an issue of John Wilkes's weekly newspaper The North Briton published on 23 April 1763, in which he attacked the king and the prime minister. The article led to his arrest for the offence of seditious libel. However, the Lord Chief Justice ruled that, as Wilkes was a Member of Parliament, he was protected by privilege. On his release Wilkes was feted as a champion of liberty, but after a change in the law on privilege he was forced to flee to Paris. He returned to England in 1768 and stood as a radical candidate for Middlesex, but after his election he was sent to the King's Bench Prison. In June 1768 Wilkes was found guilty of libel, sentenced to 22 months' imprisonment, fined £1,000 and expelled from the House of Commons. He joined the campaign for the freedom of the the press and was finally elected Mayor of London and MP for Middlesex.
The dating of the pot is not quite straightforawrd, as it was only at the time of the Middlesex elections that issue no 45 of the North Briton became well known, and therefore the pot may have been made towards the end of the 1760s and quite possibly around 1768-9 when Wilkes was standing for Parliament.
The pot is rather to large for a teapot. It may have been used to offer alcoholic punch as an inducementto voters. Elections in the mid-eighteenth century were often rowdy affairs and it was a long time before votes were cast in secret. Despite these slight difficulties in dating the piece, it is among the earliest decorated with a blue scale ground.
There are a number of items in the British Museum collection connected with Wilkes, including a gold brooch in the form of the number '45' with the legend 'LIBERTY' which was presented at the same time as this teapot, an inscribed delftware bowl, a Derby porcelain figure and a series of broadsides.
A suviving invoice from Albert Amor dated 23 May 1922 lists the pot, described as a teapot, under '770' (the lot number in the Drane sale) sold to the Lloyds for £125 (see the Object file, 1921,1215.1-165 in BEP).
- Location
- On display (G46/dc18)
- Exhibition history
-
2018 -2019, 6 Sep - 20 Jan, London, BM, G35, I Object
- Associated events
- Associated Event: North Briton (edition 45)
- Acquisition date
- 1923
- Acquisition notes
- Item 770 in Drane's 1913 catalogue, valued at £50
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1923,0215.11.CR
