Vase (1889): Art, History and Details

Vase (1889) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Walter Crane (British, 1845–1915); Maw & Co. (British (modern), 1850–1969).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Walter Crane was one of the leading figures of the British Arts and Crafts movement. His work helped establish a renewed interest in Renaissance ceramics and the importance of illustration in decorative ceramics. He collaborated with several major manufacturers of decorative furnishings including Maw & Co., an important manufacturer of aesthetic period tiles and other decorative ceramics. This vase is one of a series of vases that Crane designed for Maw around 1889 when they first appear listed in the catalogue of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in London of that year, described along with a series of tiles that Crane also designed for Maw. Its brilliant ruby-red luster surface is a hallmark of Maw’s work featuring Crane’s lyrical designs while referencing earlier 15th- and 16th-century Spanish lusterware.

Object facts

• Title: Vase
• Date: 1889
• Creator attribution: Walter Crane (British, 1845–1915); Maw & Co. (British (modern), 1850–1969)
• Culture: Britain
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Earthenware
• Dimensions: 22.4 x 22.7 cm (8 13/16 x 8 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 2017.208

A detail from the museum

The red glaze on this vase resembles the color of oxblood.

Collection credit

Gift of Katharine Lee Reid

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hepburn, Victoria. "The Kelmscott Press." IN William Morris: Designing an Earthly Paradise. Cory Korkow and Victoria Hepburn, 24-39. Cleveland, Ohio : Cleveland Museum of Art, 2017

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.