Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-wxhwt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T14:30:36.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“FEARFUL CONSEQUENCES . . . OF LIVING UP TO ONE'S TEAPOT”: MEN, WOMEN, AND “CULTCHAH” IN THE ENGLISH AESTHETIC MOVEMENT c. 1870–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2009

Anne Anderson
Anne Anderson*
Affiliation:
University of Exeter and the Huntington Library
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Aesthetic or “Patience” teapot is renowned as the ultimate parody of Aesthetic sensibilities. Composed of the head and torso of a male and female back-to-back dressed in the “greenery-yallery of the Grosvenor Gallery,” with puce hats and fashionable Pre-Raphaelite red hair, the teapot was designed by James Hadley (1838–1903) for the Royal Worcester manufactory following the success of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan's operetta Patience in 1881. Bearing on its base the inscription, “Fearful consequences through the laws of Natural Selection and Evolution of living up to one's teapot,” the vessel took a swipe at Darwin's theories of evolution, as well as Oscar Wilde's famous aphorism. This teapot is certainly not “fit for its purpose,” defying “form must follow function”; rather it is a whim of fashion, novel but transitory. Recognized as a “limited edition” and expensive, its function being primarily for show rather than use, it marks the appearance of the modern “collectable,” in effect a souvenir of Aestheticism and now seen to commemorate its apogee. Yet although loaded with aesthetic signifiers – sunflowers, lilies and gender-bending – no scholar has attempted to unwrap the teapot's meaning, in terms of the identification of china and tea with “life-style aestheticism” (Figure 15).

Type
Work in Progress
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 219 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Allen, Grant. “Cimabue and Coal-scuttles.” Cornhill Magazine 41 (July 1880): 61–76.Google Scholar
Anderson, Anne. “‘Let us live up to it!’ or Wilde about Teapots.” The Wildean, A Journal of Oscar Wilde Studies 30 (Jan. 2007): 13–35.Google Scholar
Anderson, Anne “‘Life into Art and Art into Life’: Visualising the Aesthetic Woman or ‘High Art Maiden’ of the Victorian Enlightenment.” Women's History Review 10.3 (2001): 441–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Angeli, Helen Rossetti. Pre-Raphaelite Twilight: The Story of Charles Augustus Howell. London: Richards, 1954.Google Scholar
Besant, Walter, and Rice, James. Monks of Thelema. Toronto: Rose-Belford, 1878.Google Scholar
Blunt, Wilfred. England's Michelangelo: A Biography of George Frederic Watts. London: Columbus Books, 1989.Google Scholar
Broughton, Rhoda. Second Thoughts. New York: Frank F. Lovell, 1880.Google Scholar
Burnand, F. C.The Colonel, Lord Chamberlain's manuscript copy, British Library 53248C LIC 19, January 31, 1881.Google Scholar
Cheang, Sarah. “The Dogs of Fo: Gender, Identity and Collecting.” Collectors: Expressions of Self and Other. Ed. Shelton, Anthony. London: Horniman Museum, Universidade de Coimbra, 2001. 55–72.Google Scholar
Cline, C. L.The Owl and the Rossettis: Letters of Charles A Howell and Dante Gabriel, Christina and William Michael Rossetti. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 1993.Google Scholar
Eatwell, Ann. “Private pleasure, public beneficence: Lady Charlotte Schreiber and ceramic collecting.” Women in the Victorian Art World. Ed. Campbell, Clarissa Orr. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995. 125–45.Google Scholar
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987.Google Scholar
Formanek, Ruth. “Why they collect: collectors reveal their motivations.” Interpreting Objects and Collections. Ed. Pearce, Susan M.. London: Routledge, 1994. 327–35.Google Scholar
Franks, A.W. Japanese Pottery: Being a Native Report. London: Chapman & Hall, 1880.Google Scholar
Gere, Charlotte, with Hoskins, Lesley. Oscar Wilde and the House Beautiful. London: Lund Humphries, 2000.Google Scholar
Gilbert, W. S., and Sullivan, Arthur. Patience or Bunthorne's Bride. Woodford Green: International Music Publications, 1988.Google Scholar
Godden, Geoffrey. Godden's Guide to European Porcelain. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1993.Google Scholar
“The Grosvenor Gallery Exhibition.” Illustrated London News (3 May 1879): 415.Google Scholar
Hall, Herbert Byng. The Bric-A-Brac Hunter or Chapters on Chinamania. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1875.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Walter. The Aesthetic Movement in England. 3rd ed. London: Reeves and Turner, 1882.Google Scholar
Harrison-Hall, Jessica. “Oriental Pottery and Porcelain.” A. W. Franks, Nineteenth-Century Collecting and the British Museum. Ed. Caygill, Majorie and Cherry, John. London: British Museum, 1997. 200–29.Google Scholar
MrsHaweis, H. R.(Mary Eliza). The Art of Decoration. New ed. London: Chatto & Windus, 1889.Google Scholar
Hollingsworth, Alexander T. Old Blue and White Nankin China. Odd Volumes 26, privately printed. London: Chiswick, 1891.Google Scholar
Kerr, Rose. Chinese Ceramics: Porcelain of the Qing Dynasty 1644–1911. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1998.Google Scholar
Kingsley, Charles. Two Years Ago. 3 Vols. London: Macmillan, 1857.Google Scholar
Klein, Dan, McCelland, Nancy A., and Haslam, Malcolm. In the Deco Style. London: Thames and Hudson, 1987.Google Scholar
Kowaleski-Wallace, Elizabeth. Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping and Business in the 18th Century. New York: Columbia UP, 1997.Google Scholar
“The Kyrle Society.” The Queen, The Lady's Newspaper (19 May 1877): 343.Google Scholar
Lamb, Charles. “Old China.” (1823) Essays of Elia. London: Routledge, 1885. 148–51.Google Scholar
Lambourne, Lionel. The Aesthetic Movement. Oxford: Phaidon, 1996.Google Scholar
Lang, Andrew. “Ballade in Blue China.” (1880) Ballads in Blue China. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2005. 31–32.Google Scholar
Lang, Andrew. Ballads in Blue China. (1880) Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2005.Google Scholar
Loftie, Rev. W. J. A Plea for Art in the House, with special reference to the economy of collecting works of art, and the importance of taste in education and morals, 2nd ed. Art at Home Series. London: Macmillan, 1877.Google Scholar
Marryat, Joseph. A History of Pottery and Porcelain: Medieval and Modern. 2nd ed, Rev. ed. London: John Murray, 1857.Google Scholar
Marryat, Joseph. A History of Pottery and Porcelain. 3rd ed. London: J. Murray, 1868.Google Scholar
Matthews, Alison Victoria. “Aestheticism's True Colours: the Politics of Pigment in Victorian Art, Criticism and Fashion.” Women and British Aestheticism. Ed. Schaffer, Talia and Psomiades, Kathy Alexis. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999. 172–91.Google Scholar
Merrill, Linda. The Peacock Room: A Cultural Biography. Washington: Freer Gallery of Art; New Haven: Yale UP, 1998.Google Scholar
O'Hara, Patricia. “‘The Willow Pattern that We Knew’: The Victorian Literature of Blue Willow.” Victorian Studies 36 (Summer 1993): 421–42.Google Scholar
Okakura, Kakuzo. “The Tea Room.” The Book of Tea. Ed. Bleiler, Everett F.. New York: Dover, 1964. 30–41.Google Scholar
“The Palace of Art.” Punch (17 Feb. 1879): 70.Google Scholar
“Philistia Defiant: A Fragment of the Fiction of the Future.” Punch (14 May 1881): 221.Google Scholar
Psomiades, Kathy. Beauty's Body: Femininity and Representation in British Aestheticism, Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Quilter, Harry. “The Palace of Art.” Spectator (6 March 1880): 302–03.Google Scholar
Quilter, Harry. “‘The Cornhill’ on Coal-scuttles.” Spectator (17 July 1880): 911–12.Google Scholar
Quilter, Harry. “The New Renaissance or Gospel of Intensity.” Macmillan's Magazine (1880): 391–400.Google Scholar
Redford, George. Art Sales. A History of Sales of Pictures and Other Works of Art. 2 Vols. London: by subscription, 1888.Google Scholar
Reitlinger, Gerald. The Economics of Taste, The Rise and Fall of Picture Prices 1760–1960. Vol. 2. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1982.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Talia. “Connoisseurship and Concealment in ‘Sir Richard Calmady’; Lucas Malet's Strategic Aestheticism.” Women and British Aestheticism. Ed. Schaffer, Talia and Psomiades, Kathy. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999. 44–61.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Talia. Forgotten Female Aesthetes: Literary Culture in Late Victorian Britain. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 2000.Google Scholar
Stewart, Susan. “Objects of Desire.” Interpreting Objects and Collections. Ed. Pearce, Susan. London: Routledge, 1994. 254–57.Google Scholar
Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Minature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Suzuki, Daisetz T. “Zen and the Art of Tea.” Aesthetics: The Big Questions, Ed. Korsmeyer, Carolyn. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998 56–58.Google Scholar
Vincentcelli, Moria. Gendered Vessel: Women and Ceramics. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Wainwright, Clive. “‘A gatherer and disposer of other men's stuffe’: Murray Marks, connoisseur and curiosity dealer.” Journal of the History of Collections, The Making of the South Kensington Museum; Curators, dealers and collectors at home and abroad 14.1 (2002): 161–76.Google Scholar
Walker, Lynne. “Women patron-builders in Britain: identity, difference and memory in spatial and material culture.” Local/Global: Women Artists in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Cherry, Deborah and Helland, Janice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. 121–36.Google Scholar
Webber, Byron. James Orrock, R.I, Painter, Connoisseur, Collector. Vol. 2. London: Chatto and Windus, 1913.Google Scholar
Wedmore, Frederick. “Some Tendencies in Recent Painting.” Temple Bar 53 (1878) 334–48.Google Scholar
Whistler, J. M. “The ‘Ten O'Clock’ Lecture.” 1885. Whistler: A Retrospective. Ed. Spencer, Robin. New York: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates and Macmillan, 1989. 212–27.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar. “Art and the Handicraftsman.” Aristotle at Afternoon Tea, The Rare Oscar Wilde. Ed. Jackson, John Wyse. London: Fourth Estate, 1991. 107–19.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar. “The House Beautiful.” Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Centenary Edition. London: Harper Collins, 1999. 913–25.Google Scholar
Williamson, Dr G. C. Murray Marks and His Friends: A Tribute of Regard. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1909.Google Scholar