Moorcroft Prestige
MOORCROFT PRESTIGE
Prestige designs are amongst the most sought after pieces to emerge from Moorcroft’s kilns, and have been ever since the first pieces were made over a century ago. They are often pieces not only prestigious in size, but often with highly intricate, complex and captivating design subject matter. Due to the very nature of their size, which can be up to almost 70ms in height, it can take many weeks for a single piece to be made from start to finish. For this very reason the majority of prestige designs are made to order, due to limited capacity at Moorcroft’s 1913 factory in Stoke-on-Trent, but each piece is certainly worth waiting for, as few can surpass a Prestige Moorcroft vase.
Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, wife of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, is perhaps overshadowed by her husband’s notoriety, nevertheless, Charles himself would comment on her genius, remarking in a letter to her ‘ You must remember that in all my architectural efforts you have been half of it if not three-quarters of them.’ Widely known for her stencil and gesso pictures, a type of high-relief linear design giving an affect not dissimilar to Moorcroft’s tubelining, for the tearooms that her husband designed for Catherine Cranston in Glasgow. Nicola cleverly depicts one of the four panels from 1909 of the playing cards flanked by court pages, which was set into the walls of the card room in Cranston's house. Elongated Queens circle the vase in flowing gowns of mustard yellow and ruby reds with ebony and ivory intersections for dramatic effect, making this Moorcroft design a trump card for any collection.New Paragraph
2018 Prestige Group of Seven Vase - Designer: Emma Bossons FRSA - Numbered Edition
Collecting Moorcroft takes you on a journey of discovery. Not only do you come to possess a piece of Art Pottery from one of the last original firms of the Arts and Crafts movement, and a slice of Stoke-on-Trent ceramic history, but you also invite into your home, a world of inspired designs and stories from each corner of the globe. Group of Seven is no exception for it tells a tale about a group of Canadian landscape painters from 1920 to 1933, also sometimes known as the Algonquin School. Believing that a distinct Canadian art could be developed through direct contact with nature, the Group of Seven is best known for its paintings inspired by the Canadian landscape and initiated the first major Canadian national art movement.
Initially influenced by European Impressionism, the group pursued a new, original style using bright colours, tactile paint handling, and simple yet dynamic forms. They transfigured the Canadian Shield, the dense, northern boreal forest and endless lakes, into a transcendent, spiritual force.
Emma’s design takes elements from many different paintings from the movement. Waves and rocks mimic those of ‘September Gale, Georgian Bay’ by Arthur Lismer. Influences from ‘The Pine Tree’ by Tom Thomson can be seen in the tree branches. White whips in the clouds can also be found in ‘The Fire Ranger’ by Frank Johnston. Group of Seven is an interesting amalgamation of the unspoilt Canadian wilderness as seen through the eyes of several remarkable people, as inspiring now as they were almost 100 years ago.
2018 Prestige Glasgow Peacock Vase - Designer: Nicola Slaney - Numbered Edition
Tea-rooms were a particularly Glaswegian phenomenon at the turn of the century. These establishments were more extensive than their name suggests. They included tea-rooms, luncheon rooms for men and women, general luncheon rooms, dinner rooms, billiard rooms and smoking rooms. They provided Mackintosh with the opportunity for experimenting in design which was not always possible in his normal interior commissions. Of all Mackintosh’s decorative work nothing brought him greater fame than these remarkable interiors; indeed, few of his projects created greater interest at home and abroad.
Commissioned to share with George Walton the decoration of both the Buchanan Street Tea rooms and the Argyle Street premises, by 1901 he had sole professional control over the tea-room projects. The Peacock Study for a mural decoration was created in 1897-1898. It adorned the walls of the luncheon room where stylised trees and peacock motifs were used throughout. Nicola’s proud peacock, fans his tail in full display, while his red plume is raised in a silent salute to the great designer Mackintosh was.
2018 Prestige Peregrine Vase - Designer: Paul Hilditch - Limited Edition 10
Royal in flight, elegant in posture and fierce in combat with its potential prey, the peregrine is an awesome hunter. A finely-spotted breast is offset with a white face with small black feathers suggesting the hint of a moustache. A short tail is in contrast to long, broad and pointed wings. Protective legislation is slowly restoring the birds position as one of the most respected of all falcons in the United Kingdom, with around 1,500 pairs now to be found. Drawn with no less than three vistas, two of the adult birds and one featuring a juvenile, the Moorcroft peregrines look across an urban landscape with a backcloth of gently rolling hills, almost as if considering available options on their next move.
Prestige Woodside Farm Vase - Designer: Anji Davenport - Numbered Edition
In 2000 Anji Davenport’s Woodside Farm was launched with great hope. For the first time, a countryside range designed with the innate emotions of a farmer’s daughter, Angela Davenport, captured the very spirit of winter. Anji returns with a prestige offering to excite the senses. Woodside Farm has now grown, more farm buildings have been erected and a vicarage now supports the church. This time the foxes have a new friend, and a barn owl oversees the quiet rumblings of a Massey Ferguson tractor. Sheep and cows quietly go about their business under a setting sun, and the walker can enjoy his wanderings amongst the sharpened colours of the tubelining. In the morning, the glistening white snow may no longer hark to this romantic rural idyll. For now, all can bask in the wonderful colours and imagery on this prestige vase.
Prestige London Vase - Designer: Paul Hilditch
- Numbered Edition
Every once in a while, Moorcroft create a vase that is magical. Paul Hilditch’s magnificent London is a celebration of England’s capital, framing the new architecture of the city with wonderful Victorian gas lamps that run along the Embankment. It’s a tour-de-force of tubelining skill, and has been painted in mesmerising dusk colours. Its skyline is packed full of famous buildings and its streets are endlessly in motion with colourful events, eclectic transport, exciting people and everyday quirks.
Prestige Talwin Lamp - Designer: Nicola Slaney
Victorian graphic artist, Talwin Morris, was Nicola’s inspiration for this brilliant range of Moorcroft pieces, but as ever with Moorcroft designers, in all their work, bring their own individual flair. In Talwin we see very delicate greens and blues mixed subtly with, purples, reds and black. Nicola gladly shares this magnificent design said by Moorcroft to be one of the greatest collaborations between past and present in Moorcroft history. Moorcroft connoisseurs would wholeheartedly agree.
Prestige Times Gone By (Chester) Vase Designer: Paul Hilditch -Numbered Edition
A city’s gate becomes the docking port for the imagination. You wander into a world where horse drawn carriages stampede through streets filled with merchants scurrying around with barrels and baskets, as others stand in clusters displaying their ware and bartering. Set apart by their attire, gentlemen in top hats and ladies wearing long, bustled skirts and bonnets, walk proudly in tight, stiff collars, into architecture of a bygone time. Quaint, steep pitched roofs with overhangs and dormers allow the romanticism of ‘Merrie Olde England’ to engulf you. Epic in scale, this prestige vase can only be described as enchanting, with elegant black and white timber façades holding curiosities around every corner of this Hilditch masterpiece of Moorcroft design and tubelining.