Ceramics in the Victorian Era: Meanings and Metaphors in Painting and Literature

by Rachel Gotlieb

Publisher:

Bloomsbury Visual Arts

, 2023

Overview

This book broadens the discussion of pottery and china in the Victorian era by situating them in the national, imperial, design reform, and domestic debates between 1840 and 1890. Largely ignored in recent scholarship, Ceramics in the Victorian Era: Meanings and Metaphors in Painting and Literature argues that the signification of a pot, a jug, or a tableware pattern can be more fully discerned in written and painted representations.

Across five case studies, the book explores a rhetoric and set of conventions that developed within the representation of ceramics, emerging in the late-18th century, and continuing in the Victorian period. Each case study begins with a textual passage exemplifying the outlined theme and closes with an object analysis to demonstrate how the fusing of text, image, and object are critical to attaining the period eye in order to better understand the metaphorical meanings of ceramics.

Essential reading not only for ceramics scholars, but also those of material culture, the book mines the rich and diverse archive of Victorian painting and literature, from the avant-garde to the sentimental, from the well-known to the more obscure, to shed light on the at once complex and simple implications of ceramics’ agencies at this time.

Key Features

Draws on a wide range of sources including archival material, texts, journals, artefacts, paintings, and novels
Each chapter contains an object case study
Offers a fresh approach to ceramics history, integrating recent scholarship in material culture and design history, shifting focus from the 18th to 19th century
Places not just the artefact, but also its representation, at the heart of historical analysis

Contents

List of Illustrations
Introduction
1. Ceramics as Agent of Design Reform and Aestheticism
2. Willow Pattern: A Mutable Agent of British Design and Art
3. Teacups Tell Such Wondrous Tales
4. British Pottery: Pride and Piety
5. A Victorian Pitcher Speaks a Thousand Words
Conclusion
Index

Praise for Ceramics in the Victorian Era

Focusing on the rich meanings that ceramics accrued through their use and subsequent representation in paintings and works of literature, this book embraces a radically new approach to the study of Victorian ceramics.

For anyone with an interest in the Victorian period this book is a treasure trove. Gotlieb offers a richly researched analysis of cultural messages conveyed by ceramics. The brown teapot, broken jug or willow pattern plate may be bit part players in art and literature, but they all tell powerful tales.

Product Details

• Title: Ceramics in the Victorian Era: Meanings and Metaphors in Painting and Literature
• Author: Rachel Gotlieb
• Series: Material Culture of Art and Design
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Print Publication Date: 2023
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 296
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781350354869, 9781350354845, 1350354848, 1350354864
• Resource ID: LLS:9781350354869
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T12:11:43Z

About the Author

Rachel Gotlieb is the inaugural Ruth Rippon Curator of Ceramics at the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, USA. Previously, she was Chief Curator at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto, Canada.