Two more lines emphasize the molded edge of the well. Filling out the lip is a wreath of abstracted leaves and berries joined to a running stem by fine squiggles. A hand-painted line in brown enamel continues this restrained prettiness, articulating the outside curves two thinner lines repeat them and enclose an egg-and-dart pattern. Six brackets define the profile of the rim, each shaped after an original Chinese form, later filtered through William Hogarth’s “line of beauty”-an S-curve that embodied all that was graceful to his eighteenth-century contemporaries. 1 The chips reveal the soft white of the clay body, otherwise covered by a luminous transparent glaze. When I pick it up, the potting feels surprisingly thin: earthenware, fired at a low temperature, weighs much less than a porcelain object of similar size. For me it was rather expensive, despite two chips on the rim, but I had to have it. In my cabinet I have a cream-colored soup plate, purchased in the early 1990s at an antique store in Greenwich Village. Josiah Wedgwood enamel portrait by George Stubbs on a Wedgwood ceramic tablet, 1780 Fiskars/V&A Wedgwood Collection, Stoke-on-Trent, England
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