Reginald Marlow, vintage studio pottery dish, Chun glaze with lion's head, c1945

Size:  26 cm (10 inches) diameter

Condition: Excellent condition, no chips cracks or restoration. It has a lovely ring when tapped.  There are small firing irregularities as you would expect with this type of ware, but effectively it is as it came out of the kiln.

This is a lovely bowl by Reginald Marlow, one of the pioneer British Studio potters.  The dish uses a chun (or Jun-yao) glaze, which the Chinese developed during the Song dynasty.  The use of this glaze was revived in England in the early 20th century by Charles Vyse, who re-discovered the true ingredients for the glaze, and was developed further by Marlow's teacher William Staite Murray.  A feature of the glaze is that it tends to run from the high points (on this dish, the rim) producing a light grey colour to contrast with the main blue, and where it is thicker it can be almost white. Chemically the glaze is related to the Opal gemstone, and it is used on high fired stoneware.

This dish has a lightly painted design of a rather humorous looking lion's head inside the dish, using a different underglaze colour which has fired a little green in places.  The usual painted monogram of RM is on the base.

Reginald Marlow studied under William Staite Murray and shared with him a love for Chinese style glaze techniques such as are shown in this dish.  From 1944 he was a lecturer in pottery at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and from 1948 he was Principal of the Stoke of Trent College of Art.

As you would expect, a very well produced piece with character .