Good Things by David

The shades of drabware can vary in coloration from vessel to vessel depending on when each piece was made, and by which pottery works in England produced it.  For the past eighteen years or so, I have slowly but surely been assembling a very modest collection of drabware for my home.  It's a collection that I started because I fell in love with this type of china the moment I first laid eyes on it.  You've heard me say that this china isn't for everyone. Whether you find drabware appealing or appalling, I think it's worth taking a second look at a few examples. What's nice about antique drabware is that it isn't confined exclusively to Wedgwood.  Other British pottery works, such as Spode and Ridgway, produced their very own versions of drabware beginning in the early part of the nineteenth century.  Some of the pitchers, jugs, mugs, cups, teapots, sugar bowls, among other pieces, were heavily molded with intricate detailing, while others were hand pain...

Over the course of my collecting drabware china these past eighteen years, I have greatly admired the clean lines, the fine proportions, the earthy variations in hue and gilding, of the earliest examples.  As hard to come by as some of the older pieces can be, they do come up for auction every once in a while. Although I own dozens of pieces of millennium Wedgwood drabware which was made for the Martha by Mail catalog, and some of the Tiffany & Co. drabware from the early part of the 1970s, I had yet to add anything older than these pieces. I finally have the pleasure of owning some antique drabware teacups that were made in the early part of the 19th century.  They are beautiful pieces of fine china that have managed to survive for over two hundred years, and yet, their provenance remains a mystery to me.  The ca. 1810 teacups and saucers came straight from England to be housed in my Philadelphia home. The first thing I noticed about these pieces was the...