Wedgwood Liverpool Birds Fan-Lip Plates Set of 12 — 9" Queensware View Watchlist >
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Lot # E555
System ID # 28461857
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Wedgwood Liverpool Birds Fan-Lip Plates Set of 12 — 9" Queensware
Twelve plates carrying Wedgwood's Liverpool Birds pattern, first transfer-printed in 1763 by Sadler & Green of Liverpool — the specialist firm Wedgwood relied on during transfer printing's earliest commercial years. The central scene of a peacock and peahen with two swallows passing overhead has been reissued at Etruria for more than two and a half centuries, but almost always on the smooth feather-edge Queen's shape. The Fan-Lip shape seen here — with radiating sunburst panels alternating around a scalloped petal rim — is uncommon for this pattern. Across several hundred Liverpool Birds plates surveyed, these are the only Fan-Lip examples to surface.
The fan motif itself runs deep in Wedgwood's design history, surfacing in their celebrated Bird and Fan majolica of the 1870s–80s, when Japanese pleated fans were the period's dominant decorative obsession. Translated decades later into molded Queen's Ware relief and married to an 18th-century transfer scene, the result is an unlikely cross-generational pairing that did not enter standard production. Reverse marked WEDGWOOD ETRURIA ENGLAND in black, with impressed WEDGWOOD and MADE IN ENGLAND. Date codes appear in two variants — 4 K D on several plates (Wedgwood's fourth-series system, placing those examples at 1927) and a single T on others. Lot consists of all twelve plates as shown.
CONDITION
Good. Transfer prints remain crisp and dark, and the molded rims are clean. Some crazing throughout the glaze, consistent with age and typical of period Queen's Ware.
DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS
- Diameter: 9 inches
- Quantity: 12 plates
- Shape: Fan-Lip (radiating sunburst relief, scalloped petal rim)
- Body: Queen's Ware (cream-bodied glazed earthenware)
- Pattern: Liverpool Birds (introduced 1763 by Sadler & Green of Liverpool)
- Decoration: Black transfer print
- Maker: Wedgwood, Etruria, England
- Backstamp: WEDGWOOD ETRURIA ENGLAND (black print)
- Impressed marks: WEDGWOOD, MADE IN ENGLAND; date codes "4 K D" and "T"
- Date: Circa 1927 for plates bearing the 4 K D code; remainder produced at the Etruria works pre-1940
