Code: 10134
Dimensions:
Hexagonal Wedgwood Jasperware scent bottle c.1790, depicting Poor Maria on one side and the Bourbonnais Shepherd on the other. These designs were based on Sterne's 1768 novel A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, published a few weeks before his death. There has been a small amount of restoration to the top of the bottle and a hairline crack on the reverse.
Josiah Wedgwood used the figures of the Shepherd and Maria in his ceramic cameos and predicted they would form 'a capital business'. He had perfected the formula for jasperware in the late 1770s at the Etruria works in Birmingham, producing finely modelled pure white cameos on a tinted ground which were set in brooches, rings, necklaces, shoe buckles and earrings. Many designs used fashionable neo-classical scenes of gods and goddesses, whilst others depicted contemporary figures and political causes, such as the campaign to abolish slavery. Several cameo designs – including those for Maria and the Shepherd – were created by Lady Templetown (sounds like a Bridgerton character), who often began with a silhouette in "beautiful cut Indian paper".
More information on Poor Maria an Bourbonnais Shepherd can be found at https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/poor-maria-and-the-bourbonnais-shepherd-when-literature-came-into-fashion
