Sparrow beak Milk Jug, probably Chaffers, Liverpool, soft paste porcelain, c.1760-65

This delightful sparrow beak milk jug is painted in overglaze famile rose enamels with a central peony between two blue flowering rocks. The translucency is tinged with green.

The use of white enamel decoration, as on the peony, is not particularly common on English polychrome porcelain, but it does appear on some Liverpool wares, notably those of Chaffers and early Philip Christian. The pale duck egg blue and black diaper border is also rather unusual. There are some lovely touches to the decoration, such as the shading on the leaf, and the single purple flowerhead beside the handle. It is also interesting to note that the flower stalks issuing from the blue rock on the right of the peony are in-filled with gold.

The milk jug has a wonderful outline, as the ovoid body curves up into a slender neck, terminating in a delicately everted rim. The fine strap handle is also thinly potted.

The Chaffers' manufactory produced some of the earliest porcelain in Liverpool, and his wares are particularly fine and collectable. On December 10th 1756, the following advertisement was placed in Williamson's Liverpool Advertiser:

Chaffers and Co., China Manufactory. The porcelain or china ware made by Messrs. Richard Chaffers and Co., is sold nowhere in the town but at their manufactory on Shaw's Brow; considerable abatement for exportation, and to all wholsesale dealers.

Condition: No cracks or restoration, just two tiny chips to the footrim and a small chip to the spout. There is very slight wear to the decoration in places.

This sparrow beak milk jug would enhance any collection of early English porcelain.

Dimensions: Height 3 5/8" (9.2cm)

Liverpool Porcelain of the Eighteenth Century, Bernard M. Watney, Richard Dennis (1997).