Featured Majolica Figures

I'm a sucker for a lot of things, and one of them is damaged majolica. These 2 figures have their share of damage, but I find them intriguing.

I could sure use some help trying to identify the maker's marks and who these figures are. I'm not sure they're a pair although they both appear to be musicians, perhaps of the itinerant type, and they do wear similar pants.

He is 13" tall and she would be also were it not for the broken off top of her hat.

Both are marked with impressed W & R with an L and numbers. One has a raised lozenge type mark in addition to the impressed marks.

I've found a couple of other pieces online (google images) with similar markings. One seller said the mark was either English potter Wayte & Ridge or importers Wittman & Roth, but neither accounts for the L. I'd originally thought these were continental Austria/Germany pieces, but I'm not so sure now that the two online figures were attributed to England.

All help is welcome!

 

Thanks so much for your research! I guess we have an attribution mystery.

 

Hi I'm new here as of a few days ago. I have a majolica plate with an impressed W&R/L mark like the one on your model number 110. I have been researching the mark and have some information to share if you are still looking for an attribution.
And I would add that your statues look late 19th century modelled after early 19th Meissen porcelain Malabar Lady and Malabar Man statues. Ready to help if the question is still topical.

 

If you have additional information, the subject is still topical. It's never too late to learn, and these threads hopefully benefit the entire community, not just the original poster.

 

The member who started this thread was here about a week ago, so she may get an alert that you posted and come by to see.

 

@ascot

 

W&R/L: two possible attributions - Wayte & Ridge of Longton Staffordshire and Wittmann & Roth of London.
1. Wayte & Ridge - a short-lived pottery apparently based at the Waterloo Pottery Longton c. 1864. It appears only once in the Pottery Directories of the period and in only one of the directories - Jones' Mercantile Directory of the Pottery District of Staffordshire for the year 1864. W&R took out an advertisement in that directory which gives their address as Waterloo Place Pottery, Longton. (Source: R.K. Henrywood's book Staffordshire Potters 1781-1900.) In May 1865, Wayte & Ridge was declared bankrupt. (Source: thepotteries.org website which lists information about hundreds of potters and potteries and which shows a copy of the notice of bankruptcy from the London Gazette of 20th October 1865.)
2. The Waterloo Place Pottery was occupied by Deakin & Son up to 1863 and by Lowe and Abberley from c.1864. (Source: the potteries.org. and also Henrywood's book citing the same 1864 Jones directory.) So Wayte & Ridge cannot have occupied the site for more than a few months at best.
3. Wittmann & Roth of London - Roth joined Wittmann in 1870 and their partnership continued until 1896. They retailed ceramics and glass, mainly imported from the European Continent. Wittmann & Roth registered several Class IV designs (i.e. ceramics-related) with the British Design Registry to protect the copyright of certain designs on the UK market. One of these registrations dated 8th December 1876 parcel 2 relates to two statues of British politicians Disraeli and Gladstone (Source: Godden's New Handbook of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks).
4. The mark with the initials W&R/L: I have found three applied or impressed variations of the mark on ceramics, and one hand painted enamelled variant. Your Malabar Lady and Malabar Man statues have two of them i.e. W&R/L - cf photo above of statue numbered 110 and W&R aligned vertically in a sort of lozenge above the L - cf. photo of statue numbered 111. As so does a majolica-glazed monkey wall pocket which can also be found with both of the marks appearing on your statues. The third variant has the W&R horizontally aligned in a sort of lozenge above the L. This variant appears on the Disraeli and Gladstone statues which also bear the impressed British design register diamond mark with the date code given by Godden 8th December 1876. It is clear that the 3rd mark cannot be Wayte & Ridge, 11 years after their bankruptcy. The enamelled variant also appears on the majolica-glazed monkey wall pocket. So all from the same manufacturer. The simple W&R/L impressed mark will also be found on plates (mine for example), other statues of fishermen and women, children crying over broken pots amongst others.
5. So who to attribute the other two impressed or applied marks to? From your own statues we can deduce that the two variations of the mark are from the same manufacturer given the similarity of the modelling, the consecutive numbering of the patterns and the Serif policy of the numbers. The high pattern numbers also indicate a substantial production capability in terms of designers, modellers, and production; and a later rather than earlier production of majolica. (I am grateful here for the advice and opinion of the Assistant Curator of the Stoke City Museum whom I contacted and who pointed me to Antiques Board and your post when I wrote to ask about Wayte and Ridge.) As I am sure you know, Victorian majolica was launched by Minton at the 1851 Universal Exhibition in London. Production reached its heyday in the 1870s and 1880s and started to die out in Great Britain by the end of the 19th century. Roughly speaking on the Continent and in the USA, its production started in the early 1860s and died out after the WW1. Not yet 100% conclusive of a Wittmann & Roth attribution for all three variants of the mark but the above points all very much favour production to order by the London retailer for the UK market.
Sorry to have been so longwinded and not be able to say with certainty who actually manufactured your statues. They are most likely Continental produced to order for the UK market by Wittmann & Roth of London, just like my majolica plate.
One final anecdote - neither of the persons I contacted at the potteries.org or the City Museum at Stoke had actually heard of Wayte & Ridge until I corresponded with them. They both reacted very quickly and helpfully with their information and opinions. So my warm thanks to them both. Thepotteries.org website was quickly updated to include what little information is available about the rather obscure Wayte & Ridge and I understand is in contact with the National Archives in the UK to ascertain design registry information relative to Wittmann & Roth's records. So hopefully there will certainty in the near future. And I will continue to search too.

 

Very thorough. And the research goes on.

 

Wow - thank you so much! Please do keep coming back with more information should you gather it.
I do wonder about the terms Malabar Lady and Malabar Man. Is Malabar referring to the west coastal region of India? I ask because the figures do not appear to be Indian, at least to me. The Lady has a European appearance, while the Man has an Asian/Chinese one.

 

Meissen Malabar Figurines:


It's a fanciful European interpretation.

 

In a perfect world, we'll come across these statues without the W&R/L marks but with the marks of the actual manufacturer. Potential candidates might include the Brothers Urbach (Teplice, Czech Republic today but borders were different in the late 19th century) or Bernhard Bloch (Uncin, Czech Republic today) who produced similar wares. I have also come across a photo of an old postcard from Wittmann & Roth to Dux Bohemia but the latter's production doesn't appear to correspond to the style of the above statues. I'll continue to look...

 

Absolutely. There is nothing about them that even vaguely resembles anything or anyone from the Malabar Coast. I think their clothing would be very hot in southern India.
Very nicely made though, and I always love a hurdy-gurdy.

 

I'm voting for the London retailers for the mark. I dunno if it makes any difference to the factory that made them. I think they were cheap and cheerful pieces when they were made in the latter 19th c, and I think they're great -- they have lots of charm and colour.

 

a Chinese version of the Carpenters ?