Description:

A large tea canister of distinctive shape, printed in a rather blurred underglaze blue with a series of Chinese landscapes.  This very rare tea canister belongs to a group of porcelain known by the name "Baddeley-Littler".  These wares are believed to have been produced in Staffordshire by William Littler after his return there, from West Pans in Scotland, in 1777.  The porcelain body is a frit-type soft paste, very similar to the bodies made previously by Littler at Longton Hall and West Pans.  The Baddeley-Littler name was assigned to this group by Geoffrey Godden (see Staffordshire Porcelain (1983) chapter 3) when he attributed the group to Littler working in Staffordshire c1777-1785.

Blue printed wares of the group are extremely rare, only a few pieces being known.  It seems that great production problems occurred due to the running of the cobalt in the soft lead glaze, so that blurred prints resulted.