JAMES SADLER - Teapot
Made in England
Bright White base china
This chinaware is opaque, meaning that if it is held to the light you cannot see through the china.
Very well known English teapot maker, particularly for their "Betty Brown" teapots.
Sadler produced an amazing range of widely varying designs, this teapot is what I would describe as a pretty standard, round teapot with "lipped" lid - meaning that the lid sort of locks in place when fitted correctly.
The inside of the spout has four holes to reduce the number of tea leaves that make it to your teacup when pouring!
Circa - after 1947, we suspect around the 1950's judging by the art deco design and decoration technique and the light overall crazing (see below for more details about this)
The design is in a very "Art Deco" style featuring a geometric design of flowers using very bright, vibrant colours. Strong presence of standard Art Deco bright Yellows, Orange and Black flower petals. This design is repeated on each side of the teapot.
We strongly suspect that the decoration has been transferred to the teapot, not directly hand painted. It's a tough one to determine (for us) because upon extremely close magnified examination, the artwork edges can be seen along with the artists imperfections (no human is perfect, unlike what some believe!) and our first conclusion was that this is hand painted but then looking at the identical design on the other side of the teapot, those "imperfections" are identical, a copy.
Extensive Gold gilding has been used on the teapot, with the gilder's mark on the underside. Gilding is applied to lid finger grip, the teapot top rim, teapot base, two sides of the handle and two sides plus the top rim of the spout.
Yes, this dainty small teapot is screaming out "look at me, look at me!"
BACKSTAMP (Stamped Impression)
(Top half on a downwards curve)
SADLER
(Lower half on an upwards curve)
ENGLAND
Gilders markings can be seen near the edge
COSMETIC CONDITION:
This condition description applies equally to the lid and teapot
CLEAN (Very)
NO chips
NO cracks
NO discolouration of the artwork colouring
NO tannin (or other) stains inside the teapot or on the lid
NO scratching or damage to the artwork at all
Gold gilding is substantially unworn or damaged at all, even on the sides of the handle (which often experiences the most handling) In fact you can see that "human touch" here as on one side of the gilding applied to the handle, there is a small 'flare' where the Gold was over applied slightly.
BUT NOTHING IS PERFECT, even cute (but loud) little teapots ....
Like humans, with age things start to fail and cracks appear! The glaze has begun to fail all over the teapot and the inside of the lid. It is caused primarily by temperature changes and less significantly, the type of environment the teapot was stored in. Not surprising after all these years and the constant HOT water (tea) then COLD water (cleaning afterwards). Looking closely at the teapot you can see these very fine lines in the glaze, this is NOT cracking to the actual china! Fortunately no bacteria has entered the crazes so there is no discolouration underneath!
When wet, this crazing becomes far more obvious - this is normal if an item with crazing becomes damp and in fact is a very good way to check for crazing that is not obvious when the item is dry.
With all that said, this remains a very nice example of an Art Deco style Sadler teapot and it still presents very nicely with the afternoon tea time set.
