Below are some examples and price guides of ceramics from the aesthetic movement including a Minton vase and a Christopher Dresser plate.

Minton Aesthetic-style Porcelain Vase,
England, c. 1873,
vibrant bleu celeste ground with enameled and gilded blossoms with birds and butterflies, impressed mark, ht. 12 1/2 in.

Sold for US$892.50 inc. premium at Bonham’s in 2022

Royal Worcester Company Ltd. Aesthetic Movement Gilt and Enameled Porcelain Beverage Set
Comprising two graduated pitchers with elephant head handles, height of taller 7 3/4 inches; a tapering cylindrical beaker, height 4 3/4 inches; and a shaped triangular tray, length 10 3/8 inches;
Together with Two Similar Royal Worcester Aesthetic Movement Gilt and Enameled Porcelain Graduated Ewers. Height of taller 7 3/4 inches.

Sold for $157 (includes buyer’s premium) at Doyle in 2022

Christopher Dresser for Minton, an Aesthetic Movement plate, circa 1870, the central panel enamelled and gilded with cloisonne type Japonesque still life of flowers and bonsai, within a geometric chevron and honeysuckle border, printed marks for Cauldwell, Philadelphia, 24cm diameter

Sold for £350 at Kinghams Auctioneers in 2022

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Blanc-de-chine is a French term generally used to refer to undecorated ivory white porcelain pieces made for export by the Dehua  kilns in the Fujian province, during the 17th-18th centuries. Many early European porcelain factories copied the style. Blanc de Chine wares are covered with a clear glaze which seamlessly seems to adhere to the porcelain body. Reference: Gotheburg.com

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Information and gallery of bone china. Bone china is a type of soft-paste porcelain that is composed of bone ash, feldspathic material, and kaolin. It has been defined as ware with a translucent body containing a minimum of 30% of phosphate derived from animal bone and calculated calcium phosphate. Bone china is the strongest of the porcelain or china ceramics, having very highly mechanical strength and chip resistance, and is known for its high levels of whiteness and translucency. Its high strength allows it to be produced in thinner cross-sections than other types of porcelain. Like stoneware it is vitrified, but is translucent due to differing mineral properties. Reference: Wikipedia

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Information and gallery of earthenware. Earthenware, pottery that has not been fired to the point of vitrification and is thus slightly porous and coarser than stoneware and porcelain. The body can be covered completely or decorated with slip (a liquid clay mixture applied before firing), or it can be glazed. For both practical and decorative reasons, earthenware is usually glazed. To overcome its porosity (which makes it impracticable for storing liquids in its unglazed state, for example), the fired object is covered with finely ground glass powder suspended in water and is then fired a second time. During the firing, the fine particles covering the surface fuse into an amorphous, glasslike layer, sealing the pores of the clay body. There are two main types of glazed earthenware. One is covered with a transparent lead glaze; when the earthenware body to which this glaze is applied has a cream colour, the product is called creamware. The second type, covered with an opaque white tin glaze, is variously called tin-enameled, or tin-glazed, earthenware, majolica, faience, or delft. Reference: Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Faience. The term faience broadly encompassed finely glazed ceramic beads, figures and other small objects found in Egypt as early as 4000 BC, as well as in the Ancient Near East, the Indus Valley Civilisation and Europe. However, this material is not pottery at all, containing no clay, but a vitreous frit, either self-glazing or glazed. The Metropolitan Museum of Art displays a piece known as “William the Faience Hippopotamus” from Meir, Egypt, dated to the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt, c. 1981–1885 BC. Examples of ancient faience are also found in Minoan Crete, which was likely influenced by Egyptian culture. Faience material, for instance, has been recovered from the Knossos archaeological site.

It is also the conventional name in English for fine tin-glazed pottery on a buff earthenware body, at least when there is no more usual English name for the type concerned. The invention of a white pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an oxide of tin to the slip of a lead glaze, was a major advance in the history of pottery. The invention seems to have been made in Iran or the Middle East before the ninth century. A kiln capable of producing temperatures exceeding 1,000 °C (1,830 °F) was required to achieve this result, the result of millennia of refined pottery-making traditions. The term is now used for a wide variety of pottery from several parts of the world, including many types of European painted wares, often produced as cheaper versions of porcelain styles.

English generally uses various other terms for well-known sub-types of faience. Italian tin-glazed earthenware, at least the early forms, is called maiolica in English, Dutch wares are called Delftware, and their English equivalents English delftware, leaving “faience” as the normal term in English for French, German, Spanish, Portuguese wares and those of other countries not mentioned (it is also the usual French term, and fayence in German). The name faience is simply the French name for Faenza, in the Romagna near Ravenna, Italy, where a painted majolica ware on a clean, opaque pure-white ground, was produced for export as early as the fifteenth century. Reference: Wikipedia

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Hard-paste porcelain is a ceramic material that was originally made from a compound of the feldspathic rock petuntse and kaolin fired at very high temperature, usually around 1400 °C. It was first made in China around the 7th or 8th century, and has remained the most common type of Chinese porcelain.

From the Middle Ages onwards it was very widely exported and admired by other cultures, and fetched huge prices on foreign markets. Eventually Korean porcelain developed in the 14th century and Japanese porcelain in the 17th, but other cultures were unable to learn or reproduce the secret of its formula in terms of materials and firing temperature until it was worked out in Europe in the early 18th century, and suitable mineral deposits of kaolin, feldspar and quartz discovered. This soon led to a large production in factories across Europe by the end of the 18th century. Reference: Wikipedia

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Below are some examples and price guides of polychrome ceramics including a Chinese tulip vase and a Victorian Italian bisque whippet dog.

A POLYCHROME-ENAMELED TULIP VASE
China, 19th/20th century, five-lobed with a high central neck surmounted with a lotus bud-form mouth, the body decorated with interior scenes alternating with bird-and-flower designs, four-character Qianlong mark on base,
ht. 10 3/8 in.

Sold for US$332.80 inc. premium at Bonham’s in 2024

PAIR OF MEXICAN POLYCHROME-DECORATED AND PARCEL-GILT EARTHENWARE OVOID JARS OR BUCAROS
17TH CENTURY, POSSIBLY TONALA, ON LATE 17TH-CENTURY ENGLISH EBONISED STANDS
Each with everted rim flanked by small loop handles, one side to each decorated with three arches, the bases of the vases or jars, rounded; the wrought-iron-mounted ebonised stands each with three figural supports.
The vases: 34 ½ in. (87 cm.) high; 22.5 in. (57 cm.) wide; the stands 20 in. (51 cm.) high; 22 in. (56 cm.) diameter; 48 in. (122 cm.) high overall, and similar

Sold for GBP 113,400 at Christie’s in 2023

Chinese Polychrome Porcelain Figure of Guanyin, modeled standing on a dragon and wave base holding a lotus leaf and a basket with fish, h. 16 in., now mounted as a lamp, h. (incl. socket) 23 1/4 in.
Sold for £120 at TimeLine Auctions Ltd in 2022

Sold for US$425 at Neal Auction Company in 2024

Whippet Italian Greyhound Polychrome Victorian Bisque Dog 19th Century

DIMENSIONS APPROX 14.5x5x12CM

Sold for US$100 at Passion For Antiques in 2024

A Pre-Columbian Moche polychrome face form pot with two handles 7″h

Sold for US$325 at Clars Auction Gallery in 2024

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Porcelain is a vitrified pottery with a white, fine-grained body that is usually translucent, as distinguished from earthenware, which is porous, opaque, and coarser. The distinction between porcelain and stoneware, the other class of vitrified pottery material, is less clear. In China, porcelain is defined as pottery that is resonant when struck. In the West, it is a material that is translucent when held to the light. Neither definition is totally satisfactory: some heavily potted porcelains are opaque, while some thinly potted stonewares are somewhat translucent. The word porcelain is derived from porcellana, used by Marco Polo to describe the pottery he saw in China. Reference: Encyclopaedia Britannica

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