Pottery Mark Query - Old china ware fancy platter with just a small hand written 817A

by Steve
(Cape Town South Africa)

Pottery Mark Query - Old china ware fancy platter with just a small hand written 817A:- Hi.. we have a plate and some other pieces handed down to my wife from her mother, who says that they were handed down to her from her mother and so forth......we have tried to identify the markings on the internet and through our local antiques shop without success.

We assume it is English as the family is all from England and from the Devon area around Tynemouth but that's just a guess.

We were also told that they probably pre date 1850 or thereabouts. Being complete novices we don't know what to believe. The colours are vibrant and the markings don't seen to match anything that we have see.

I think that it may be bone china but who knows. It would not look out of place on a French Louis XIV dining table!.

Any info that you can provide would be greatly appreciated. We would love to know its origins.

Steve

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Pottery Mark Query - Old china ware fancy platter with just a small hand written 817A

The forum Help Elf says:-

Ok Steve, nice old china - interesting family provenance. It would need an expert to confirm or deny what I am about to say, but it's my two pennies worth. Perhaps others can come in with an opinion too.

Looks like good old fashioned Staffordshire ware to me - dating probably from the mid 19th Century - so whoever told you that was probably correct.


Not bone china. You can do a test - Peter wrote a reply on how to tell if an item is made out of bone china. To find the page, go to the very top right of this page to the in-house search box and type in the exact words "bone china following test". The page will be no. 1 in the main listings below the sponsored ads. Scroll down to Peter's reply.

Do the test yourself and you can see how your plate does not pass the test. You can tell by the chips in the plate that it is not bone china. Earthenware or stoneware (stoneware is earthenware fired at a higher temperature so as to be not porous any more) is much less hard than bone china (a type of hard-paste porcelain with cow bone powder added). Even though bone china seems so light and see through and delicate, it is much harder wearing than earthenwares.

Also, remember, bone china was only invented in 1799 by Spode and the recipe was kept secret for many years. So it is a bit early for makers other than the specialists (see Peter's online Bone China Maker's A to Z Guide) to be knocking out bone china.

Hope this gives you some of the background to your pieces. If you ever want a valuation, go the the treasure chest logo top right of the page and get one of Peter's Antique Roadshow style valuations.

H.E.



For general free advice on how to research your collection, Peter wrote this page:

value of antiques.

My vintage and antique china values page