Porcelain Dining Table Flower Troughs

Description

A rare pair of mid 19th century Porcelain Flower Troughs, to adorn the Dinner Table, marked with the Mortlock mark. The 19th century Mortlock China Company were a Retailing rather than a manufacturing company. In fact, they were considered the most important china retailer in London in the early nineteenth century, exercising enormous power and influence over the manufacturers, such as Nantgarw, particularly Coalport, even insisting that the products that Mortlocks sold, from their premises in Oxford/Regent Street should bear the Mortlock 'back-stamp' mark rather than that of the original maker. In common with other major London houses, Mortlocks employed independent decorators to finish its wares, sometimes on an exclusive contract and often with a rather over-worked result , much of which was copied/borrowed from the opulent Brighton Pavilion with animal motifs, moulding and acanthus leaves jostling promiscuously for attention.
The finished product was of an exceptionally high quality, with a Coalport dinner service for example, retailing for 200 guineas (equivalent to £20,000 today). A single dinner plate might sell for as much as £8, six months’ wages for an agricultural labourer! As an indication of how prized Mortlock Ware was, that in October 1820 two ex-employees were arrested for a series of thefts from the Mortlock’s town house in Hanover Square, stealing china worth £80 (and a pair of boots) – all stolen and 'fenced' over a two year period. Following their trial at the Old Bailey the thieves were duly sentenced to death .

Alternatively, they would look grand, filled with little flowers standing before the statue of a saint or on the mantelpiece !
(Acknowledgement to 'The Mortlock Encyclopedia))

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