Royal Worcester

A rare set of twelve Royal Worcester cabinet plates painted with Middle Eastern and North African views, 1929

made for Ovington Brothers Company, New York, each finely painted in the center with a different view, the majority signed W. J. Bagnall, titled on the reverse, within a wide green ground border richly decorated in raised paste gilding, the footrim also gilded, the undersides of each plate with gold printed factory mark, date code for 1929 and retailers mark 'Made Expressly for Ovington Bros. Co. New York', painted titles and pattern number Z 382. 

diameter 10 3/8 inches; 26.3 cm

Located in New York. Please enquire to arrange a viewing.

The present Middle Eastern and North African scenes are a highly unusual subject for the Worcester factory (or indeed any other English porcelain factory), and are likely to have been a special commission.  

The scenes were painted by William Bagnall, a factory artist at Royal Worcester from 1918 until the mid-1930s, who specialized mainly in flower and still-life subjects. The subjects appear to have been copied directly from lithographs of watercolors reproduced in one of at least two travel atlases of the early 20th century. From either The Holy Land, painted by John Fulleylove and described by John Kelman, first edition published in 1908 or from Egypt, painted and described by Robert George Talbot Kelly (1861-1934), published in 1902. The New York department store, Ovington Brothers, founded in the mid-19th century retailed imported and domestic fine china and decorative arts to a wealthy clientele in Manhattan and Brooklyn, until its closure in the mid-20th century (see image above). 

The twelve different scenes are titled on the reverse as follows:

Sais Mosque, Cairo

Village of Shinbad, on the Lower Nile

St. Sophia Mosque, Constantinople

A Street in Gabes

A Waterside Mosque near Cairo

Mosque of Omar, Jerusalem

Tiberias, by the Lake of Galilee

A Courtyard at Algiers

A Street in Bikanir, India

Forecourt of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

Pylon at Karnak

A Street in Tangiers