Ceramics in the English Country Houses of the National Trust: Asian Stories (Part I) and European Stories (Part II) by Patricia Ferguson, Former Curator, British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The first lecture will introduce the imported Asian ceramics typically found in British country houses during the period 1600 to 1950. Beginning with the Elizabethan and Jacobean passion for Chinese porcelain, kraak-style wares were used as luxury table wares and often adapted with precious metal mounts for new purposes. They were considered the first global wares and were made in Jingdezhen and decorated in underglaze blue. The arrival of magnificent jars and vases painted with political subjects, but also vases of flowers, in the 1630s lead to the fashion for massed display and assembled garnitures, which resulted in imports of matching vase sets in the 1690s.

During the cessation in trade with China during the transitional period (1618-1683) between the Ming and the Qing dynasties, Europeans turned to Japan and the kilns in Arita to supply their tables and decorate their wall brackets. In the eighteenth century, tea and tablewares painted in polychrome enamels ‒ famille verte and famille rose ‒ filled the interiors and marked the taste of the evolving generations of owners. These were in unlimited shapes and often with painted armorials as well as novelty birds and animals. In the early twentieth century, while building rail networks in China, the discovery of ancient wares from the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties introduced a whole new category of collecting. Each remarkable object has a story to tell: of exploration and international commerce, technical innovation and high fashion, extravagant collectors and family pride. With over 250 houses and more than 80,000 ceramics, the choice of stories available through the National Trust is limitless.

Ceramics in English Country Houses of the National Trust: European Stories, Part II will focus on non-Asian ceramics found in British country houses managed or owned by the National Trust, presented in the order in which they were in fashion and either acquired new or collected second-hand. Beginning in the seventeenth century with Italian maiolica and Dutch Delftware, collecting followed in the eighteenth century with Meissen porcelain, French porcelain and faïence, and British Chelsea, Worcester, and Derby porcelain.

The discovery of the ceramics at Pompeii and Herculaneum in the mid-eighteenth century, acquired as souvenirs, inspired the potter Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) and his partner Thomas Bentley (1731-1780) to produce copies to furnish libraries and chimneypieces for armchair travelers, which resulted in the mania for vases of all kinds. Then, with the dispersal of the French royal collection during the Revolution in 1789, English aristocrats acquired Vincennes and Sèvres porcelain, and when they returned to Paris after the Treaty of Amiens, in 1802-03, Paris porcelain.

The rise of ceramics collecting in the nineteenth century and the many publications led to acquisitions by maker’s marks, and an interest in historic ceramics in the Victorian age, ably catered to by the illustrious wares of the Minton manufactory of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire.

The speaker will draw on a wealth of documentary evidence – letters, inventories, watercolors, paintings and historic photographs – to explain how these ceramics, touched almost every aspect of family and social life in Britain over 400 years.

Patricia F. Ferguson is an independent scholar based in London, England, where she has worked as a curator at the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. For the past two decades, she has served as Hon. Adviser on Ceramics to The National Trust in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and recently completed a survey of Asian ceramics in the National Trust for Scotland. Following her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, she studied Chinese ceramics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, where she earned a post-graduate degree. Her recent publications include Reflecting Asia: the Reception of Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings in Britain, 1738-1770, in Elisa Ambrosio et al (eds); and China and the West: Reconsidering Chinese Reverse Glass Painting (De Gruyter, 2022). She served as editor of Pots, Prints and Politics: Ceramics with an Agenda, from the 14th to the 20th Century (British Museum Research Publication, 2021); and is author of Garnitures: Vase Sets from National Trust Houses (VAP, 2016); and Ceramics: 400 years of British Collecting in 100 Masterpieces (PWP, 2016), which received the 2017 American Ceramic Circle Book Award, as well as numerous publications.

Image: Three-piece garniture, Wedgwood & Bentley, Etruria, Staffordshire, England, terracotta stoneware with pebble glaze, circa 1772-75. H. 14 ½ in. (36.6 cm). Saltram, Devon, The National Trust (NT 870801). ©National Trust Images/Robert Morris.