Tunbridge Ware

Collecting Tunbridge Ware is like a love affair

The connoisseur can spot a lovely piece across the crowded gloom of a dusty antique shop or through the bustle of a trade antique market.  And we all remember the first piece we ever handled.  It may have been Granny’s workbox handed down to her from her Granny or a striking piece seen in a Museum or fine art auction.  There are several well researched books on the manufacture and history of Tunbridge ware (listed below) but even the most detailed book cannot express the wonder and delight of holding your first piece of Tunbridge which may be composed of many thousands of pieces in a picture of castle, a stag or floral borders.  The Hollamby picture of Tunbridge Wells itself (page…) is reputed to consist of over 10,000 pieces of mosaic.  The quality of the 19th Century craftsmanship has resulted in fine pieces in good condition, many so perfect as the day they were made some nearly 200 years old having sturdily survived even as use of Great Grandmama’s workbox.

Tunbridge Ware reflects the industrial and sociological shifts of the mid 19th Century.  Reforming liberal governments assured the working masses of a few day’s holiday a year, some leads of pay beyond bare, subsistence and the new countrywide network levels of excursion steam trains took them to spas, seaside resorts, or to the Great Exhibition of 1851 or to places they had never seen before.  Many of the English industrial labouring class and rural population never travelled more than a few miles from their home.  Such new excursions took them to resorts from where they bought souvenirs, love tokens or useful items for the universal tasks of needlework or correspondence.  For the more affluent, Tunbridge Ware furnished fine tea caddies to house valuable tea from India or China and folding correspondence slopes.

The earliest Tunbridge Ware before Mosaic Ware was decorated with pen work or paper.  The new sensational Pavilion at Brighton, built by John Nash for the Prince Regent in the 1820’s or the new piers at Ramsgate and Eastbourne feature on these early pieces.

Even as souvenir work, good Tunbridge was never as inexpensive as Mauchline Ware or pottery fairings.  According to a more recent trade price list of 1925 a double tea caddy in rosewood with a castle would cost 6 Guineas, (£250 in today’s money).

£6 in 1920 would be £246 today

£4 in 1860 would be £446 today (Bank of England estimates)

5 Shillings for a small piece in Victorian times would be over £100 Sterling today.

Broadly one could say that the value of Tunbridge Ware is in line with its historic costs excepting very special major pieces or rare pieces which have grown 100% in recent decades.

Overall though the value of Tunbridge Ware has increased beyond standard inflation partly due to the artistry of each piece and because it cannot be made today.  Many of the exotic woods, as you will find in patterns of “falling cubes”, or Van Dyke patterns versus are not available today.  The merchandise which come into the English docks from the 18th or 19th Century maritime fleets can no longer be sourced.  Some records list up to 40, 50, 60 or more exotic veneers, a number expanded by bleaching, shading or even scorching.  Many do not grow today.  The French ebinestères for example exhausted the stocks of ebony which can no longer be grown.

The principal workshops were of Nye, Barton, Wise and Hollamby.  Their individual characteristics are distinctive and some pieces display trade labels or even the remains of one.  The cost and time of producing some of the mosaic blocks resulted in the workshops selling on their veneers to each other which involves some deep study for exact attribution.  Tunbridge had fraternal relations with Killarney in Ireland and although Killarney involved more use of arbutus and more use of gauge work (marquetry rather than mosaics), the Irish work is of very high quality.  Sorrento ware is the nearest any European craftsman came to emulating Tunbridge but the designs fall well short of Tunbridge Ware.  Nevertheless the two may be confused particularly on geometric bands across writing boxes often mis-described as Tunbridge.  Spa wood ware was also available in the mid 1880’s.  Although of excellent craftsmanship it was painted rather than veneered.  There is a particularly fine example on page…The quality of Tunbridge limited the quantity.  Tunbridge Ware exists in several museums, such as Tunbridge itself or Guildford Museum in Surrey or in private collections which come on the market increasingly rarely.  Queen Mary, the wife of Edward VII was an avid collector.  She customarily expected the shop to offer as a gift any particular china piece she had noticed.  Her large collection can be seen at Frogmore House near Windsor Castle, open to the public in summer for a few days only.  In the 1970’s the market was more free and there were dedicated auctions at Phillips, Bonhams and Sothebys from where some pieces here can be traced.

The woods sourced for Tunbridge Ware included oak, maple, sycamore, satinwood, coromandel, amboyna, walnut, beech, ash, burr walnut, ebony, rosewood, arbutus, holly, fustic, acacia, kingwood, lignum vitae, cherry plum, pearwood and yew, laburnum and particularly boxwood for edge stringing.  A speciality was oak or other woods which had been immersed in ferrous water.  The green fingers knobs and escutcheons were mostly composed of bone, ivory, tortoise shell, mother of pearl from the Nautilus shell.  (NB add piece on chaleabate…).

Eridge Castle features often among the many castles and abbey ruins, mosaic ware as it was the country seat of the Marquis of Abergavenny who was a prominent patron of Mosaic Ware.

Invaluable for identifying scenes on Tunbridge Ware

Tunbridge Ware is featured in several good books and booklets…