collection of Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent

Description:

Pearlware jug with turned neck enamel painted in bands of brown red and green, and with a conventional border painted at the shoulder. On each side is a sepia printed design over-painted in enamel colors, the oval framed cartouche with cupid at a tomb inscribed  There is Rest in Heaven. The whole appears to have been slightly over fired.  To the bottom left of the oval frame is the inscription Dannel Stoke. The front of the jug has the painted inscription R. Davis 1797. The image of the inscribed tomb was a popular mourning device, but so far a record of the death of R. Davis 1797 has not been located.

It is possible that Dannel Stoke refers to Samuel Daniel who was listed at Stoke as a gilder and enameler in Chester & Mort’s Directory of 1796 and as a Printer of Staffordshire Ware in the Universal Directory of 1798.  However, the name “Dannel” occurs on at least one other piece and no printed pieces of this date inscribed Daniel are recorded.