Antique Cream-Glazed Earthenware Lidded Box, French or English, 19th Century

A covered box in cream-glazed earthenware, the family the English call creamware and the French faïence fine. The decoration is pure neoclassical vocabulary: relief swags and garlands, oval medallions, ribbon and laurel, and a bead border of raised pearls running top and bottom and around the knob, the refined Louis XVI and Adam-era ornamental language revived through the 19th century.

It is relief-molded, the ornament integral to the form, then dipped in a clear lead glaze that pools faintly in the recesses and gives the hollows a slightly deeper cream tone. A cream-glazed relief box like this was made on both sides of the Channel, by the English creamware makers in the Wedgwood Queen's ware tradition and by the French faïence fine factories such as Creil-Montereau, Gien, and Sarreguemines.

The allover fine crazing is the glaze aging and is normal for lead-glazed earthenware. At this scale it is a dresser or vanity box, a boîte couverte, suited to dry or decorative use rather than food.

Measures 5.25 inches across and 3.5 inches tall.

Styling: keep it on a dresser or washstand holding cotton, hairpins, or small trinkets, or use it closed as a quiet sculptural object on a shelf.