The Victorian period was filled with style “revivals.” Renaissance Revival, Gothic Revival, Jacobean Revival, Romanesque Revival, Rococo Revival and Neoclassic Revival to name a few. All of these had influence on every field of decorative endeavor from architecture to jewelry to paintings to fabrics and furniture. None, however, had more influence on ceramic manufacturers than Egyptian Revival.
Most ceramic companies during the late Victorian age created pieces with Egyptian themes and the influence was broadly shown in Europe. Great Britain ruled the world in the last half of the 19th Century and those who could afford to took advantage of friendly overseas travel to experience other lands. The Grand Tour, where upper middle class adventurers would travel through Europe in search of worldly enlightenment, became a staple of Victorian life. As the British Empire expanded to the Middle East, Africa and India it would increase places of interest for travel.
The strange fascination with ancient Egypt had roots at the tail end of the 18th Century.
Ever since Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798 and brought back strange and exotic items to Europeans, interest in Egyptomania flourished throughout the continent. After the coronation of Great Britain’s Queen Victoria, the world would have seventy years to wait before the biggest ancient Egyptian discovery would occur—that of the undisturbed tomb of King Tutankhamen—but icons of ancient Egypt like pyramids, scarabs and the sphinx made for fashionable decor in Victorian homes that majolica manufacturers were more than happy to cater to. English potters George Jones and Wedgwood fed this appetite for Egyptian revival material with zeal.
Wedgwood created a full line of majolica wares with Egyptian silver plate fittings in the 1860s.
They made candlesticks and desksets shaped like Egyptian funerary skiffs, canopic jars and ancient Egyptian sphinxes.
Egyptian motifs found their way into Wedgwood majolica designs like this Reed jug, cattail jug and this Christopher Dresser jardiniere with flying fish.
George Jones made stunning sphinx adorned jardinieres, candlesticks and centerpieces in majolica and used Egyptian motifs in other pieces.
