Help with Gardner Porcelain

[totheboss]

Hello everyone,

I have picked up this Pretty little Teapot and 2 cups and saucers.

on the back is a Mark that looks like the Gardner mark but has the No:4 at the bottom

I have never seen a number on a Gardner mark before and was worrying if this could be a fake, there are a couple on e-bay with this mark on them

 Would they be correct?? as I am thinking of bidding for them, your thoughts please.
Bye the way there was a note in the Teapot that said " This Russian tea pot & Cups & Saucers were the property of the late Duke of Connaught when Commander-in-Chief in India" I looked up the Duke and he was Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught (1850_1942) son of Englands Queen Victoria

Kind regards to all
Alex

[Tatyana]

I'm a lurker, with a large collection of Gardner and IPF Russian Porcelain. In my opinion, your items appear to be nicely authentic late 19th-early 20th century Gardner factory porcelain, made for the Islamic market: note the Arabic lettering at the base of the mark. These items are somewhat less marketable than Gardner porcelain not made for the Islamic market, but nonetheless quite popular with Pakistani and other Islamic collectors, and with some Russian porcelain collectors.
TATYANA

[totheboss]

Hi Tatyana,

Thank you for your reply, as I live here in Australia I find it very hard to find Russian Porcelain locally and was  astonished to find my little Tea pot at a local market, I have now started to look around for more pieces to build up the set if possible.
Thanks again and best wishes.
Alex

[Tatyana]

Hi Alex --

I'm glad to try to help. There seem to be a fair number of pre-1918 Russian items in Australia: I'm not entirely sure why. A few years back, I bought a couple of IPF Order Plates (19th century additions to the original 18th century Gardner services) on eBay from an Australian seller. Sadly, such finds are not around any longer.
However, your Gardner porcelain for the Islamic market turns up on eBay & elsewhere from time to time. I found a plate matching your items in Inverness, Scotland, about 12 years ago, probably because many Scottish women went to Russia as governesses in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Good LucK!

TATYANA

[David_Pritchard]

Dear Alex,

I found a similar Gardener mark with pattern number in the book Фарфор и Фаынс Российской Империи (Porcelain and Faience  of the Russian Empire), Moscow 1993. on Table VI, Figure 1 and a match for the Arabic script numbered mark on Table VI, Figure 5. I am certain that I have seen this same pattern before when I was in Russia.

David

[totheboss]

Thank you David,

You are always there with some helpful information for those of us who are in need,
This forum is very lucky to have members like yourself and other who offer a helping hand.
Thank you, not only from myself but also ALL the others you have helped.

Kind regards
Alex

[David_Pritchard]

Thank you for your kind comments. Below I have posted more information.

An excerpt about Gardner Porcelain from a longer article on Russian Porcelain at this web site:

http://www.noteaccess.com/APPROACHES/DecorativeAA/PRussian.htm

Eighteenth-century Gardner groups and figures of a sentimental pastoral character are still close to Meissen prototypes, and so are its rare figures representing characters from the Italian Commedia del'Arte. The academician, G. Miller, who visited the Gardner factory in 1779, noted that 'its quality is equal to that of any foreign factory'. He found only one defect: 'that its glaze is less white than the Saxon. But they are trying to remedy this, and have gone quite far towards success.' [A. Selivanov: Farfor i Fayons Rossiyskoy Imperii [Vladimer, 1903, p. 22]. Not only did Gardner already compete with the Imperial factory, but he even obtained orders from the court of Catherine II for specially designed services.

Miller remarked with admiration on the beauty of one of these, decorated with architectural scenes and classical ornament. Gardner also produced for the Court four separate diner services decorated with emblems of the Russian orders of knighthood.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century the work of the Gardner factory had grown emancipated from imitation of foreign models. In particular, its figures of Russian peasant types and craftsmen reveal a dignified simplicity, remote from the increasing sophistication of Sévres and Meissen figures that were being made at that time. The best of these also show a mastery of sensitive modelling and sculptural poise, accompanied by a bold and brilliant range of colour combinations, and frequently by skillful contrasts between matt and glazed painting used on the same figure. All these innovations and refinements illustrated how Russian modellers and painters were freshly and independently inspired by this new art, and were reaching beyond what they had learned from foreign masters, while introducing native themes and decorative colouring drawn from their traditional Russian background.

The Gardner factory could not escape the general decline in visual art which oppressed the second half of the nineteenth century throughout Europe., But in a number of its individual products it still maintained the exacting standard of an earlier age. Some of its figures of national types, especially Asiatic ones, are modelled with extraordinary finesse, even in the 1880s, though the colouring tended to be cruder than it was in the previous decades. But many of the peasant figures of this late period are mannered and 'literary'. Some are painfully coarse and clumsy, and seem like drunken caricatures of their serene and charming predecessors. In this period Gardner also embarked on mass-produced tea services, gaily painted with roses in white medallions against deep blue, red, or green grounds. Many of them were for export to the Turkish Empire or Central Asia, and carry Arabic lettering under the Gardner factory mark. They are widespread enough to be familiar to many people who have never seen the rarer and finer kinds of Russian porcelain.

Gardner porcelain had a wide variety of marks in the 140 years of its existence. Different shapes of the Latin letter G, painted underglaze in blue or black, were most frequent in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Occasionally the mark is similar to the Meissen crossed swords with a star. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the full name of the factory, impressed either in Cyrillic or Latin characters, becomes more frequent. In the second half of the nineteenth century the mark is usually the Moscow St George and Dragon crest, surrounded by a circle, bearing the full name of the factory, at first impressed, and later painted in green or red. In the last decades of the factory's existence the double-headed eagle was added to the design, and this elaborate mark continued after the Gardner firm had been absorbed by Kuznetsov.


See these auction and shop links for Gardner tea wares made for the Persian market:

http://local.waddingtons.ca/decorativearts/view.php?id=19september2006&sub=jewellery&o=220&lot=242

http://www.hantmans.com/pages/catalogs/020323catalog/020323_pages/10-020323.HTM

http://www.trocadero.com/bettygaines/items/20397/item20397store.html#item


David

[totheboss]

Thank you David,

As we all can see by your reply, you always go the extra mile to help others in need.
So from the replies I've had English and Arabic lettering would be OK for Gardner and I take it that the Arabic would be the more common and the English (mine) would be a bit harder to find.

Kind regards
Alex 

[David_Pritchard]

The modern Arabic script numeral (٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩) pattern numbers are more common outside of Russia as they were produced for export to the Ottoman and Persian Empires, Kingdom of Afghanistan and other countries in the region. In Russia one will most often find Europeanised Arabic numerals (0123456789) for the pattern numbers. However, one will still find the same patterns available in antique shops inside and outside of Russia.

David

[Forum Admin]

May I remind users that we do not permit advertising of items for sale here. We just can't allow this to become an "ebay" type site. Thanks.

FA