Abstract
The current paper continues the series of studies dedicated to the faience vessels discovered over time and preserved in the collections of the History Museum in Moldavia. I have analyzed six tableware items (small and large plates) and a bedpan, an item that is part of the sanitary objects. The first plate, printed with the “Chantilly” pattern, is attributed to the John Thomson (& Sons) manufacture of Annfield Pottery in Glasgow and it was produced in the period 1865-1884. The second item – manufactured by Kannreuther Frauer & Co. of Birmingham – has an Oriental-inspired decoration. This company also manufactured decorative vessels with scenes inspired from the Romanian Independence War (1877-1878), as well as from the culture of the Romanian people. The same Oriental composition is also approached on the third plate (in the catalogue’s order) by the Lindner & Co manufacture. Present on the Romanian market even before 1847, the company produced in 1868 vessels decorated with images from Romanian space (images of urban and ecclesiastical centres). The same manufacture is believed to have produced the fourth plate, depicting a romantic scene specific to Victorian decorative art. Two other vessels with the same figurative composition – the first black and second flow blue – do not feature a producer’s trademark, reason for which they cannot be ascribed to any pottery workshop. The bedpan – preserved in a fragmentary state but restored – was manufactured by the same company of Birmingham, Kannreuther Frauer & Co. I noted that the decoration used for the bedpan – whose name has not been identified thus far – was also approached by the Lindner & Co manufacture, which produced plates decorated with similar images in monochrome chromatics. Hence, it may be mentioned that the Romanian market was a preferred area for English companies in terms of faience products, whose popularity had increased in the Iași area, following an education process in this respect provided by better living standards and by the emergence of salon etiquette, as well as by the generalization of certain aesthetic tastes.