Bowl

Wedgwood

  • Titles Bowl (Descriptive)
  • Artist Wedgwood, England, est. 1759
  • Medium bone china
  • Dimensions 3 7/8 × 8 1/2 in. (9.8 × 21.6 cm)
  • Credit Line Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; The Buten Wedgwood Collection, gift through the Wedgwood Society of New York, AFI.522.2011
  • Work Type bowl
  • Classification Containers

See More of the Collection

Frame with decorative, pierced, and scrolling border, in the center against a blue fabric ground the silhouette figure of Gutenberg.
Oval medallion of black basalt with bas relief portrait bust of Roman Emperor Tiberius (42 BC-37 AD) facing right, wearing laurel leaf crown, the name TIBERIUS impressed below the truncation, self frame, pierced to hang.
Small round medallion of white jasper with dark blue jasper dip and white bas relief of an "Offering to Jupiter" — Jupiter is seated on a stool with a staff and an eagle by his side, a young maiden approaches him with a large round bowl — in a cut-steel mount set with two bands of faceted cut-steel beads and a wider band of small cut-steel beads arranged in a floral pattern between single, larger, oval, faceted cut-steel beads, the reverse with a brass and steel pin (a later addtion or repair)
Two ash and burl ash armchairs, the cabriole front legs end in small scrolls, the arm supports curve inward and likewise end in small scrolls that function as handholds, the arms lathe-turned, terminating in a carved, stylized anthemion motifs where they meet the stile, the back square and each crest rail is set with three green jasper medallions with classical motifs: .1) "Germany and Turkey with amorini grieving for Elisabeth" (from the 1790 series designed for sale in Germany, most of which celebrate the accession and virtues of Leopold II of Austria, who succeeded his brother Joseph II in January 1790. Elisabeth was the favorite niece of Joseph II, who died in February 1790); (probably) "Cybele, goddess of nature and fertiliy"; sacrificial scene (unidentified); and .2) "Fame inscribing a vase to the memory of Elisabeth" (from the German series); "Hercules strangling the Nemean lion" (modeled by William Hackwood ca. 1773); "Germany and Turkey with armorini grieving for Elisabeth" (from the German series); the striped green silk upholstery new