HISTORY:
The Washington pottery works was built in 1882 and located in Victoria (renamed College Road in the 1950's) Road, Shelton
Immediately prior to the trade name Washington Works being used in 1946, these works were the home of Swinnertons.
This earthernware tableware is obviously intended for use by children, a collection of animals to gain the interest of the child ranging from piglets, ducks, a mouse, Mother rabbit and of course a Teddy Bear. Very much in the vein of Beatrix Potter characters although we are not so sure these are from her books. The overall theme is Mother rabbit washing the dishes, surrounded by her little helpers (a mouse (rat?), piglet and a teddy bear. No running rabbits here around the edge but instead there is the duckling pulling a cart of soil and a piglet hard at work pushing a wheelbarrow. Everyone is busy!
One slight oddity we noticed is that Mother rabbit has her fluffy round tail protruding from the rear of her dress - most often the tail is not shown at all in other rabbit designs.
Although the very well done decorations may appear to be transferware, it is most definitely NOT!
The decoration appears to be a hybrid of both hand artist work and some transfer used as well, when examined very closely the majority of the artwork is solid brush strokes with some dot painting for the finer details - the artist who did this work was certainly very skilled at their craft.
The backstamp clearly indicates that this piece left the works in 1954 (not pattern #54)
WASHINGTON POTTERY LTD - Children's Themed Bowl
Made in England
Large 7.75" diameter bowl, we tend to think this was intended as a Pasta bowl (wide and not so shallow) or at a pinch, a soup bowl (although it is a bit shallow for a soup bowl)
Design: A mix of characters (which look similar to those created by Beatrix Potter) washing the dishes. The central character is Mother rabbit with her little helpers. Around the rim of the bowl are a duckling and a piglet, both are also very busy - in fact that seems to be the overall theme of this artwork ... being busy!
We thought that Washington Pottery (who are more well known for their Beatles products in the 1960's) must have produced a series of these children's tablewares but for the life of us we cannot locate any similar Washington Pottery children's earthernware online at all - perhaps these were made for only a limited period of time, we really don't know.
Cream coloured ceramic
We would have to say this the artwork decoration appears to be a hybrid of application methods, looking very closely at the artwork we can see solid brush strokes but then there are also dot patterns as well. Another tell-tale sign is the "human touch" where colours meet, the coloured borders are not neat and "machine like" but sometimes cross into each other or have very small gaps between colours. This applies to all of the artwork and it is certainly not transferware.
Gold gilding has been applied to the outer rim of the bowl
DIMENSIONS:
Measures: 197mm diameter and 33mm deep
Weight: 300g
BACKSTAMP DETAILS:
This backstamp was used from 1946 ~ 1970 however it is fortunate that the year of manufacture is also marked (not all of Washington Pottery pieces had the year indicated)
This photograph is taken from the actual bowl, not an on-line copy & paste of someone else's item!
COSMETIC CONDITION:
Overall, remarkable condition for a general purpose child's bowl
CLEAN
NO cracks
NO flea bites
NO chips
NO marks or scratching to any of the artwork
NO bottom of the bowl scrape or knife marks - this indicates the bowl had seen very little use
Crazing is evident both topside and underneath but it is not easily seen and NO ingress of bacteria has occurred, which leads to discolouration under the glaze - very nice condition even with the crazing present.
Gold gilding around the rim shows no evidence of handling wear at all
A nice bowl for the children's tableware collector that is NOT Bunnykins for once!
