Aesthetic Movement Decorative Dishes and Vide-Poche

A green majolica glazed pedestal vide-poche with an acanthus leaf pattern, England circa 1875-1880. French for ’empty pockets’, the vide-poche is a small bowl or container kept in...

A Super-Scarce English majolica glazed trinket basket, attributed to Minton, circa 1880s. With amazing color and texture, the delicate little earthenware basket is glazed in a deep...

An 19th century basket made up of a hand formed twisted and looped wire holder set with a Majolica glazed plate at the center. The plate shows a geometric pattern glazed in earth t...

19th Century English Majolica Fan Shape Dish.

A large alloyed bronze patinated dish bowl stamped Just Andersen Denmark and numbered 1736 X. Some wear to the patination which should be visible in the photos but otherwise a larger...

A majolica green glazed leaf pattern server, England, circa 1880. A serrate edged leaf shaped platter with an open work twig form handle. Beautiful mold work showing smaller branc...

A very rarely found, early Wedgwood majolica glazed shell and coral open salt cellar – date marked 1872. In the manner of Palissy, the globose Volut...

A rarely seen wedgwood char dish, an Aesthetic Movement mold showing a pair of fish in a deep dish glazed to resemble tortoise shell. Char is a fresh-water m...

Mid nineteenth century silver plate naturalistic centerpiece by Elkington and Co. depicting deer and flora.

Important tray made in gilded bronze and “cloisonné” enamel attributed to Elkington and Willms. Ornamented with a centering polychrome enameled peacock plaque, made of very high standard quality, mounted on a gilt-bronze dish, decorated in relief with Japanese Nô theater masks. The great Birmingham firm of Elkingtons, was largely the creation of George Richards Elkington (1800-1865), who worked from 1824 in Birmingham as a manufacturer of silver-mounted scent bottles. By 1829 the business had expanded sufficiently for a branch to have been established in London. In the late 1830s the Elkingtons began making experiments to apply the principles of electro-metallurgy to gilding and plating with silver and in 1840 the patent was at last taken out. Elkingtons owed their rise to a position amongst the most important silversmiths of the country to their exploitation of this new process and the two of the most famous designers then employed, both of them French, Albert Wilms (1827-1899) and Morel-Ladeuil (1820-1888), who helped to make Elkingtons’ reputation with their elaborate exhibition pieces. Albert Willms was apprenticed as modeler and engraver to Klagman, Dieterle and Constant in Paris before working for Morel & Co. in London in 1848. On his return to Paris he was employed by the great Parisian silversmiths including Christofle and Froment-Meurice, for whom he designed pieces to be presented at the 1855 Universal Exhibition in Paris. It was during this period that he joined the firm of Elkington in London as head decorator. Elkington was soon to become one of the first to produce refined pieces in “champlevé” enamel in the Chinese and Japanese styles, which were presented with great success at the London Universal Exhibition in 1862 (see Masterpieces of Industrial Art & Sculpture at the International Exhibition 1862, J.B. Waring, London, 1863, III, pl. 211). Willms’ “champlevé” enamels could not be compared, however, with the delicate “cloisonné” enamels exhibited by Japan at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1867. This explains why Elkington adapted the ancient Japanese technique to produce pieces according to European taste and custom. Followings the 1867 Exhibition all the major European artists rivaled in ingenuity for the 1873 Universal Exhibition in Vienna. In London Albert Willms presented his luxurious vases and cups in “cloisonné” enamel for Elkington (see Illustrations of Art Manufacturers in the Precious Metals exhibited by Elkington & Co., Inventors, Patentees and Manufactures of electroplate, 1873), whilst in Paris, Ferdinand Thesmar (1843-1912) produced in the workshops of Ferdinand Barbedienne (1810-1892) a tray decorated with a golden pheasant in “cloisonné” enamel on copper...