Beautifully executed, tubelined water pitcher in an archetypal Art Deco shape and decorated in the ochre, orange and royal blue Byzantine pattern designed by Charlotte Rhead for Crown Ducal, (A. G. Richardson & Co. Ltd.)

Byzantine was Charlotte’s first popular design for Crown Ducal, dating to late 1932 or early 1933 and it had a reasonable production run until 1935. Variations in the intensity of the colour palette used and in the strength of the mottled, sponged glaze are typical. Colours can be absent, particularly a yellow in the flowers and a green wash component over the glaze. The leaves may be left uncoloured as is the case here. The base of the pitcher is signed in enamel C Rhead by the decorator Hannah Williams, along with her decorator’s mark of H. Interestingly, the Crown Ducal stamp is absent, so this must have been one of the very first pieces in the run.

Dimensions: H 18cms x 12cms (diameter of opening) x 9.5cms (base diameter.) Weight 530g.

Charlotte Rhead (1885–1947) was an English ceramics designer active in the 1920s and the 1930s in the Potteries area of Staffordshire and was a contemporary of Susie Cooper and Clarice Cliff . She was born into an artistic family- her father trained at Mintons and her elder brother, Frederick Hurten Rhead, became a well-known pottery designer in the USA.

Charlotte studied at Fenton School of Art and worked at several potteries, honing her skills as a tubeliner, but she is best known for her association with the Burleigh Pottery, where she worked as a designer from 1926 until 1931, then the firm of AG Richardson in Tunstall whose brand name was Crown Ducal. 

This is in excellent original condition for a piece aged 90 years and is both highly decorative and useful!