Wedgwood serving dishes with oak leaf pattern

Object name: Wedgwood quarter circle serving dishes with oak leaf pattern.

Object number: CHWJA: JAH425.1-4

Category: Object

Description: Four quarter circle shaped Wedgwood serving dishes with oak leaf pattern.

Made: circa 1800

Context: This set of dishes did not belong to the Austen women, but it is believed to bear the same leaf design as a set that was acquired by the Austens in 1811. Jane described the set in a letter to Cassandra on 6 June 1811:

‘On Monday I had the pleasure of receiving, unpacking & approving our Wedgwood ware. It all came very safely & upon the whole is a good match, tho’ I think they might have allowed us rather larger leaves, especially in such a Year of fine foliage as this. One is apt to suppose that the Woods about Birmingham must be blighted. — There was no Bill with the Goods — but that shall not screen them from being paid. I mean to ask Martha to settle the account. It will be quite in her way, for she is just now sending my Mother a breakfast set, from the same place.’

Josiah Wedgwood (1730-95) came from an established family of potters in Staffordshire; through his extensive experimentation, he made many advances in the production of English pottery and counted George III’s wife, Queen Charlotte, amongst his customers.

In what must be a reference to Wedgwood in Northanger Abbey, General Tilney is delighted with Catherine Morland’s ‘approbation of his taste, confessed it to be neat and simple, thought it right to encourage the manufacture of his country; and for his part, to his uncritical palate, the tea was as well flavoured from the clay of Staffordshire, as from that of Dresden or Sèvres.’

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