Derby Porcelain mug, painted by Zachariah Boreman, 1794
In June I bought three lots of eighteenth-century Derby Porcelain for the museum, with funding from my Art Fund New Collecting Award.
One of the pieces was a large mug showing a view of Church Rocks in Dovedale. Due to its high-quality workmanship, the painted landscape has been attributed to Zachariah Boreman (1738 -1810).
Boreman worked for Derby Porcelain for 11 years, arriving in 1783 and leaving, back to London, in December 1794. In 1785 or 1786 he began to decorate dessert services and tea wares with topographical views of Derbyshire. The Dovedale mug has been dated to circa 1794, suggesting it was made in his last year at Derby, when he was in his mid-50s.
I am interested in the types of topographical views portrayed on porcelain and their relationship with sketches and print culture. There are two known collections of watercolours, in the public domain, attributed to Boreman which were used as designs on porcelain – used both by him and other porcelain painters at Derby. Derbyshire Archaeological Society owns 55 watercolours (on permanent loan to Derby Museums), and Derby Museum has another 10.
There are 10 watercolours of Dovedale in these collections, showing the major views including Reynard’s Cave, Pickering Tor and Ilam Rock.
There is no ‘match’ for the picture of Church Rock within the extant Boreman watercolours. Although one of the watercolours owned by the Derbyshire Archaeological Society shows Church Rock from the opposite direction.
We know that Derby Porcelain held, among others, a copy of Middiman’s Select Views of Great Britain which contained four engravings of Derbyshire dating from the 1780s – Matlock High Tor, Matlock Bath, Cromford and Creswell Crags – but no Dovedale views. They also bought original sketches from artists including a Mr Day (William Day or Edward Dayes?), Mr Bone and Mr Glover (possibly John Glover who we know sketched in Derbyshire from 1804 but was here a decade earlier?).
We have later pictures of Church Rocks in our collection including these two engravings.
Although it can feel like a needle in a haystack, ‘matches’ can be found. In our collection we have a Derby Porcelain cup and saucer which we bought back in 2012 as part of a Heritage Lottery Funded ‘Collecting Cultures’ project. The saucer has a rather naively painted view of ‘Richard Arkwright’s Mill, Cromford’ on it. Derbyshire Archaeological Society have a Boreman watercolour of the same view dated 1787, although the design seems to have been simplified when translated onto the saucer and it’s painted in a less sophisticated and skilled manner.
References: ‘Watercolour Paintings by Zachariah Boreman’ by A. Bamberry and A.P Ledger in the Derby Porcelain International Society, Journal 3, 1996
Thank you to the Art Fund and to Frances Carey, former curator at the British Museum and Dr Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth, former ceramics curator at the V&A for their advice and support.
Buxton Museum and Art Gallery 