Although unmarked, pieces of this kind date from the brief period c.1821-23 when Pardoe worked with Quaker entrepreneur William Weston Young to decorate the large stock of blanks that remained after porcelain production ceased at Nantgarw.
Pardoe’s Nantgarw painting was based on his standard Regency-era repertoire – here he uses ornamental reserves painted with exotic birds against a Sèvres-style turquoise ‘pebbled’ or caillouté ground – but it is among his very best work.
He greatly admired Nantgarw’s extremely white and translucent body and brought to the project (his last before he died) more than 30 years of painting experience.
This particular plate is not from one of the ‘named’ services or a registered pattern and may be a unique decorative scheme.
The market for these pieces has weakened in recent years as the collecting audience contracts. This plate did not quite meet its £2000-3000 estimate at the auction on December 7 but sold to a private collector at £1900.
After Pardoe died, his son William Henry Pardoe took over the Nantgarw pot works and began manufacturing domestic stoneware bottles and brown-glazed earthenwares and clay tobacco pipes.
