A French faience plate by Creil et Montereau, model Labrador, painted with a rooster on a cream ground.

The cockerel stands in ochre and teal on a patch of green grass, comb and wattle in rose, his tail sweeping up in banded plumes, ringed by a wreath of rose blossoms and teal foliage. A second band of the same flowers and leaves runs around the rim. The painting is loose and confident, with the brush marks and small irregularities of work done by hand rather than printed.

Creil et Montereau was among the major French faience works of the nineteenth century, and the Labrador stamp with EMAIL SANS PLOMB — lead-free glaze — belongs to its production between 1884 and 1920. The lead-free claim was a selling point in its own day, at a period when the lead content of tableware glazes had become a public health question.

The whole surface carries the fine crazed network that faience of this age and this glaze develops, and the cream has warmed with time. It is a country plate rather than a formal one: the coq is the emblem of France and the workhorse motif of French farmhouse pottery.

Suited to hanging on a wall, standing on a plate rail or dresser, or joining a mixed group of French faience.

MEASUREMENTS
Diameter: 9 in / 22.9 cm

CONDITION
Sold in used antique condition with wear consistent with more than a century of age. The painted decoration is bright and complete with no loss to the rooster or the flowers, and the plate is sound with no cracks through the body and no restoration found. There is crazing across the whole surface, front and back, with brown staining settled into the crazing lines — heaviest on the reverse — together with scattered small brown spots on the face and minor glaze nicks and rubbing at the rim edge.

Please note that crazing is inherent to faience of this age and glaze and is not damage in itself; the staining held within those lines is separate and is described above as a condition point.

Sold as a decorative piece. 

Photographed as received and sold as found. Please review all images, which form part of the condition description.