Butter dish made by Buchan pottery

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

52414

Title

Underside view of butter dish with a handpainted floral design made by A. W. Buchan & Co, Portobello with maker's marks

Description

One butter dish with a handpainted floral design. Made from buff coloured stoneware. Circular with raised rim. Small flat circular butter dish. Oatmeal body colour. Inside of base of dish decorated with a pale blue flower, a dark blue flower with red dots and a red flower + green leaves and two very small flowers outlined in blue and with red centres. Pale blue band under inside of rim and top edge of rim decorated with dark blue/green dots. Brown stamped mark "BUCHAN / PORTOBELLO / SCOTLAND / FINEST STONEWARE within a thistle emblem and "89/M1/1". Decorators mark: "4" hand-painted in blue on base.

Type

Ceramic

Accession number

HH3653/1/72

Copyright

The City of Edinburgh Council Museums & Galleries

The Buchan company had a range of set designs with evocative names such as "Brittany", "Iona", "Bluebell", and perhaps their most famous, the "Thistle" pattern. Each painter decorator had their own mark which they painted by hand on the base of each piece they painted.

This dish was painted by one of the decorators one day during her lunch break. It is not any of the patterns which had been approved for production, but seems instead to have been done as a practice, or a casual doodle. The painter was on good terms with the men who managed the kiln, who fired it for her.

As part of the Auld Reekie Retold collections project, 2019-2022, four ex-employees of the Buchans company were invited to look at the collection of photographs and pottery items at the Museums Collections Centre. While looking at the collection of Buchan ware in the store, one of the ex-employees spotted this tiny dish. She did not think it had survived this long, and was very moved to see it all these years later!

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