Casket

In Great Britain during the Victorian era, a heterogeneous style was created by the wealthy middle class. These people found more and more opportunities to enjoy everyday life.

Easy access to all kinds of materials, including exotic ones, and new technologies made the then built houses still arousing interest, fascinating with their splendour and fantasy, like Victorian interiors, combining Gothic with Neoclassicism, Renaissance with Chinese or Japanese art. Strong colours and rich ornamentation were used. Numerous trinkets, filling specially made for them cabinets-cum-vitrines, completed the impression of splendour. The abundance and decorativeness of the solutions - absurd combinations - is often perceived as lack of taste of the British middle class, which took advantage of the availability of utilitarian and decorative objects in every way. Ceramic products found buyers in all regions and social groups. Wedgwood's blue and white jasper stoneware was particularly popular. They appealed to the aristocracy, filling the interiors of the residences of the wealthy. Thanks to the industrialisation of production and low prices, colourful ceramics could also be found in the houses of the bourgeoisie.

A small jasper casket with a modest form, manufactured in Wedgwood's factory, was made of stoneware surface dyed blue, and decorated with a superimposed white figural motif. The trinket, fashionable in the 2nd half of the 19th century, could also have had a utilitarian purpose. Small openings in the lid may indicate that the box was used to store cosmetics. The genre scene on the lid is unusual. It depicts a peasant family at a meal and the floral motifs placed around it refer to the native English flora.

The decoration differs in form and content from standard antique representations on Wedgwood products. Therefore, the whole is an original solution.

Magdalena Norkowska