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Lot Essay
Cradles are thought to have been given as gifts at weddings and christenings in celebration of fertility and for good wishes. The present example is one of four extant.
Two dated examples in the Glaisher Collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum and an initialed cradle formerly in the collection of Harriet Carlton Goldweitz are each decorated with faces similar to that on the present example. An undecorated slipware cradle at Colonial Williamsburg is also known. For illustrations of these comparables and an explanation of the inscriptions found on them, see Bernard Rackham, Catalogue of The Glaisher Collection of Pottery & Porcelain in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, Woodbridge, 1987, Vol. I, no. 251, pl. 21B and no. 254, pl. 23F; The Harriet Carlton Goldweitz Collection, Sotheby's, New York, 20 January 2006, lot 18; and Leslie Grigsby, English Slip-Decorated Earthenware at Williamsburg, Virginia, 1993, p. 52, fig. 61.
Two dated examples in the Glaisher Collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum and an initialed cradle formerly in the collection of Harriet Carlton Goldweitz are each decorated with faces similar to that on the present example. An undecorated slipware cradle at Colonial Williamsburg is also known. For illustrations of these comparables and an explanation of the inscriptions found on them, see Bernard Rackham, Catalogue of The Glaisher Collection of Pottery & Porcelain in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, Woodbridge, 1987, Vol. I, no. 251, pl. 21B and no. 254, pl. 23F; The Harriet Carlton Goldweitz Collection, Sotheby's, New York, 20 January 2006, lot 18; and Leslie Grigsby, English Slip-Decorated Earthenware at Williamsburg, Virginia, 1993, p. 52, fig. 61.