When Susan Williams-Ellis of the Portmeirion Pottery designed her Pantomime range in the 1960s, the records indicate she re-drew the engravings she found in a book published by Pollock's, because the prints were too faint in their original form to successfully reproduce on china. That may be true, though by re-drawing she will also have avoided photographic copyright issues. Whatever the truth of the matter, her drawings, made in ink, are dark and sharp, though are occasionally rather too heavy so that the transfers are lacking fine detail.

Portmeirion 'Pantomime' ware designed by Susan Williams-Ellis

All the reference material for the Sussex Lustreware Harlequinade range of ceramics has come from my collection of original 19th century toy theatre character sheets and 20th century facsimiles. Because the sources were so diverse, with many different artist/printers hands at work in the original sheets (Green, Skelt, Pollock etc) I did quite a lot of adaptation so that the range would have the unity of single visual aesthetic. Some of the drawings stay fairly close to the original material in terms of their look, but occasionally, as with the image of Clown on a Donkey, I 'improved' the design so as to be what I needed it to be, though hopefully while always staying within the bounds of the toy theatre style. My collaborator on this project, Gloria at Sussex Lustreware, came up with the idea of using freehand lustre swags to link transfer vignettes of the audience around the edges of plates.

I eschewed Susan Williams-Ellis's use of pen and ink, and instead drew the images in soft black pencil, scanning them in greyscale so that the fired transfers would have the silvery effect that marries so well with pink lustre. While the result doesn't mimic 19th century engraved character sheets, it nonetheless has a quality which conjures the spirit of them.

The Golden Beehive Inn is from a scene from Whittington and his Cat or Harlequin Lord Mayor of London, re-printed by Benjamin Pollock from the play originally printed by Green and then Redington. (The origins of plays are often tangled as toy theatre printmakers revised old plates with their own names.) The drawings for the play are quite crude, though have a naive boldness and vigour I rather like, and the scene of the inn on a harbour is one I liked so much that I kept returning to it. I combined it on a mug with 'street' characters from Green's The Castle of Otranto or Harlequin and the Giant Helmet, including a 'Postman' and an 'Egg-seller'.

The Golden Beehive from Whittington and his Cat
Postman from The Castle of Otranto
Egg Woman from The Castle of Otranto

Occasionally an original engraving required quite a bit of 'adaptation' to produce the image I required for Harlequinade. Clown Riding a Donkey was one such, as I wanted an illustration with much cleaner lines and a better definition of the subject matter.

Popular poses and groupings of characters from 19th century Harlequinades appear repeatedly, drawn by different hands for various publishers. Sometimes I adapted from more than one version of a particular group, as in this drawing for Clown and Pantaloon having a tea-party made for a teapot.

Groupings of Harlequin characters in a pyramid are enormously popular on toy theatre character sheets, usually with Columbine at the apex.

Above, my drawing for a pyramid of Harlequinade performers, and below, the reference on a sheet by the publisher Skelt. I replaced the two 'Imps' with performing dogs.
Sussex Lustreware Teapot with a Harlequinade 'pyramid'

Pieces from the Harlequinade range may be purchased direct from Sussex Lustreware

HERE

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