Dragon lustre bowl with wide lip, lavender/blue exterior and pale turquoise pearlized interior. A continuous pierced golden band pattern is set at the upper and lower rim of the bowl. Two outstretched four-legged, four-clawed golden dragons with scales and curled tail stretching across nearly half of the bowl, each. The dragons have a fierce look with bulging eyes, two horns, a mane and spikes along their backs. The spikes, part of the face, horns and claws are highlighted with red glaze. The wide lip is decorated with a golden geometric pattern over a blue glaze. A golden husks of wheat design is arranged below. Three framed medallions depicting different Asian-inspired architecture and vegetation intersecting the band design. The bottom and the lower half of the bowl are decorated with a large intertwined four-legged, four-clawed golden dragon, which is not well defined. The outline of the dragon is done in gold over a wash of blue glaze with some red highlights.

Bowl

Wedgwood

  • Titles Bowl (Descriptive)
  • Artist Wedgwood, England, est. 1759
  • Medium bone china
  • 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.2869.2008
  • Object Name bowl
  • Classification Containers

See More of the Collection

Oval black basalt medallion with relief portrait of John Dryden (1631-1700) facing right. John Dryden was born in Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire the eldest of fourteen children. In 1650 Dryden went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied the standard curriculum of classics, rhetoric, and mathematics. He graduated in 1654 with his BA, graduating top of the list for Trinity that year. Dryden returned to London during the Protectorate, where he obtained work with Cromwell's secretary of state, John Thurloe. This later helped him publish his first poem, Heroic Stanzas (1658), a eulogy on Cromwell's death which is cautious and prudent in its emotional display.
Small figure of a reaper or an allegory of autumn made of white soft-paste porcelain covered with a clear, lead-based glaze, in the form of a naked putto or cherub leaning against a coral-like "stump" and draped with a cloth that is belted at the waist, standing on an irregular, rocky base, under his left arm he holds a thick sheaf of wheat, his right arm is raised and outstretched and in his right hand he holds something, which has broken off (perhaps a sickle).
Tall vase of red earthenware, the body cylindrical and covered with a thick, opaque whitish glaze, the body of the vase with a series of striations encircling the body at regular intervals, with long streaks of a darker, bluish glaze down the side, the shoulder is wide and the neck short and squat, the edges of the neck and shoulder as well as the foot rubbed glaze free allowing the red clay to show through.
Pair of cast-iron earrings, from a central pierced and scrolled element hang two small filigree tassels flanking a central, larger tassel also of filigree.