An exceptionally fine quality rare example of an early Bloor period Royal Crown Derby hand painted porcelain Garniture of generous proportions by Thomas Steel. First quarter of the Nineteenth Century, Regency period.
Each vase finely painted on the front of the shield-shaped body with a colorful cluster of Summer Flowers and old-fashioned Roses beneath a gilt neoclassical motif on the waisted neck, affixed on each side with a gilt acanthus leaf-molded handle terminating in a gilt satyr's head and raised on a circular foot and square base.
Condition: Good condition with no restoration, all handles are perfect, there is evidence of surface crazing to top rim of large vase, this is not restoration. Red painted crowned BLOOR DERBY on all bases.
Height: (large vase, an impressive) 11.75" (30cm). Width: (entire including handles) 9.25” (23.5cm). Depth: (at base) 3.5” (9cm).
Location: Dublin City, Ireland.
Affordable fixed charge Worldwide Store to door shipping offered.
Thomas Steel 1772-1850 is considered the very best 19th Century porcelain painter of fruits. He was born in Staffordshire in 1772 and was first apprenticed by Wedgwood. He moved to Derby in 1815, where he became the foremost flower and fruit painter. In 1825 he moved on to the Rockingham factory in Yorkshire, and a few years later to Minton in Staffordshire, where he worked the rest of his life. Steel had a very recognizable style of fruit painting, perhaps best described by the biographer John Haslem: "Steele painted both flowers and insects well, but as a painter of fruit on china he had no superior, if, indeed, he had any equal in his day... His grouping is harmonious, the light and shade well managed, each piece of fruit is well rounded, and the outline softened and blended into the one next to it, each partaking of the reflected colour from the other.".