John Ridgway Yellow & Brown Dinner Plate Villa Pattern Stone Ware circa 1830s - Bi colour transfer ware printed Italianate landscape 26.7 cm diameter

A relatively rare bi-colour antique John Ridgway yellow and brown transfer printed white stoneware dinner plate with an elaborately scalloped rim and pattern showing a romantic Italianate house and landscape. It dates to the early-mid 19th century and has the brown transfer printed rococo scroll JR bird stoneware mark to the base. This mark relates to John Ridgway of Cauldon Place works, Hanley, Staffordshire, England from the period 1830 to 1841 during which King William IV and then Queen Victoria were on the throne. 

This Italianate design inspired pattern has in the foreground a young woman carrying a bucket in front a European continental style house with an Italian style bridge over a river. In the background there are trees, more continental style buildings and vertiginous mountains. This is one of a series of "Villa" prints by John Ridgway and is recorded on the Transferware collectors club database as Villa #04. (Ref 1)

There is a narrow inner border of floriate and dart shape with four small yellow flowers like primroses equally spaced around it. The wide decorative outer border has ornate undulating rococo scrolls that form four large cartouches filled with brown printed floral sprays.  The space between these cartouches has a yellow ground colour with a finely detailed slightly darker tiny yellow floral pattern which forms a frame to the central scene.  Within the yellow on yellow ground colour there are four smaller brown printed rococo scroll reserves or cartouches each with a songbird sat on a tree branch. Around the rim there is a brown line with small dots.

The plate has a foot rim and stands 1 3/8 inches (3.5 cm) high and is 10 1/2 inches (26.7 cm) in diameter. It weighs a total of 605 grammes unpacked. 

The plate is in fairly good antique condition, it has crudely repaired and disguised chip to the front and back at the 5.30 position on the front, there is glaze crazing and minor discolouration to the edges of the rim. Please see the images.

This is a rare and very attractive plate for display and will be of particular interest to collectors of Romantic pattern and English yellow and brown transferware and the works of John Ridgway. 

References;

Transferware collectors club database pattern number 10934