Antique Wedgwood Blue Jasper Footed Dresser Box "Classical"

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For your consideration,

A very fine Wedgwood Jasper kidney-shaped trinket or dresser box, for jewelry or powder, etc. the "Classical" … Read more For your consideration,

A very fine Wedgwood Jasper kidney-shaped trinket or dresser box, for jewelry or powder, etc. the "Classical" pattern. Very nicely done, it features happy scenes with cupids or putti, and a fine spray of leaves and flourishes, 'framing' each scene, and a lovely group of three ladies dancing on the top.

Very clean and in excellent, near mint condition. c.1920

Measures about 3.5" wide, about 4" tall. A nice size.

What is Jasperware?

Named after the mineral jasper for marketing reasons, the exact Wedgwood formula remains confidential, but analyses indicate that barium sulphate is a key ingredient. Wedgwood had introduced a different type of stoneware called black basalt a decade earlier. He had been researching a white stoneware for some time, creating a body called "waxen white jasper" by 1773-74. This tended to fail in firing and was not as attractive as the final jasperware, and little was sold.

Jasperware's composition varies but according to one 19th-century analysis it was approximately: 57% barium sulphate, 29% ball clay, 10% flint, 4% barium carbonate. Barium sulphate ("cawk" or "heavy-spar") was a fluxing agent and obtainable as a by-product of lead mining in nearby Derbyshire.

The fired body is naturally white but usually stained with metallic oxide colours; its most common shade is pale blue, but dark blue, lilac, sage green (described as "sea-green" by Wedgwood), black, and yellow are also used, with sage green due to chromium oxide, blue to cobalt oxide, and lilac to manganese oxide, with yellow, probably coming from a salt of antimony, and black from iron oxide. Other colours sometimes appear, including white used as the main body colour, with applied reliefs in one of the other colours. The yellow is rare. A few pieces, mostly the larger ones like vases, use several colours together,and some pieces mix jasperware and other types together.

The earliest jasper was stained throughout, which is known as "solid," but before long most items were coloured only on the surface; these are known as "dipped" or "dip". Dipping was first used in 1777, Wedgwood writing that "the Cobalt @ 36s. per lb, which is too dear to mix with the clay of the whole grounds". By 1829 production in jasper had virtually ceased, but in 1844 production resumed making dipped wares. Solid jasper was not manufactured again until 1860.Early dark blue was often made by dipping a body made from the solid light blue. In the best early pieces, the relief work was gone over, including some undercutting, by lapidaries See less