Seaham Pottery 'Sailor's Return'

In my previous post I showed a grainy picture of a plaque titled 'Paul Jones' from an old auction catalogue. Below left is its pair, also inscribed 'A Present for E Towning'.  Recently a similar plaque came up on eBay, this time with a hand-painted dedication to 'Harriet' – perhaps a sailor bought it as a gift for his sweetheart. If you were the buyer, please get in touch – I'd love a better photo.

This Sailor's Return transfer is attributed to Seaham, and also appears on very large frog mugs like the one below (click on the images to enlarge). The lustre decoration is  similar to that on the 1847 Seaham jug (see centre below) in the Sunderland Museum. The final image shows the mug's immense size, next to a slop bowl with a similar transfer.

Closer inspection shows that the transfer on the slop bowl, although based on the same image, has some marked differences to the transfer on the mug. Note the lantern in the background in the right image, and the positioning of the sailor's bag.

The transfers on the slop bowl match those on a large frog mug in the Sunderland Museum, also attributed to Seaham Pottery. However, their lustre decoration is unlike any of the items attributed to Seaham so far.

To my mind, the items above look much more like wares from the Stockton Pottery of Thomas Ainsworth (see below). The circular plaques are sometimes found with impressed marks with a castle and anchor (see below centre), so the attribution for these items is pretty solid.  Stockton items are often typified by what Ian Sharp has called 'slug trail' decoration. Note also the bands of lustre around the top of the jug, and compare them with the bowl and the mug above.

So the jury is out on the attribution of the slop bowl and second mug.  As I've said before, attributing items on the basis of lustre decoration is an imprecise science, so more work needs to be done. As always, if you have items with these transfers that might help, please get in touch.