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DELFTWA RE Dining and Related Wares 
               Other 
D187. BUTTER DISH                                                       
                   Other Bowls and Pierced Dishes 
Probably London 
1700-1720 
H.: 4 3/8" (11.1 cm); 
Diam.: 5 3/4" (14.6 cm) 
BODY CLAY: Fine-grained buff 
TIN GLAZE: Slightly blue-to 
turquoise-white, unevenly applied on 
lid interior and bottom of bowl. 
Overall, excluding bottom edges of lid 
and footrim. 
SHAPE: Thrown, Bowl interior has 
conical spike. Nearly cylindrical footrim 
with narrow edge. 
DECORATION: Painted and sponged. 
Trees and bushes with, on bowl, a man 
walking and buildings. Finial top bears 
central dot, radiating lines, and 
concentric circles. Other borders 
composed of concentric circles and 
horizontal lines. 
FD 
D owls of this type-covered and with an internal spike-are thought to have
been used for serving butter. Four circa 1715 examples that resemble this
one 
in profile but have different painted (and no sponged) decoration were excava-
ted at the Vauxhall pottery site, and another example of slightly different
profile was found elsewhere in Lambeth. The spikes on all of these pieces
are 
triangular, rather than conical, in section. 
   Although the term butter dish was in use by the end of the seventeenth
cen- 
tury, it may not always have referred to dishes of this type; the 1699 
Pickleherring inventory has entries for 4,125 delft butter dishes, with butter
in 
this case perhaps referring to size.' Densely sponged trees and Dutch-inspired
figures occur on a 1708 dated punch bowl (see also no. D286).,' 
1. 1For Vauxhall, see Britton, London, 
pp. 66, 71, pl. J. For others with triangular 
spikes, see col. pl. M, no. 121 (floral); 
Rackhaln, Glaisher, vol. 1, no. 1695 (figur- 
al), Britton, Bristol, no. 8.47 (grapevine). 
For a Lambeth example (Lambeth High 
Street or Norfolk House), found by 
Garner, see Archer, V&A, no. 1.51. 
2. Britton, Inventories, p. 64; Archer, V&A, 
p. 71. 
3. Lipski and Archer, Dated Delftware, 
no. 1047. 
212 The Longridge Collection