The Bretby Vase

One of our favourite pieces is our ‘Bretby Vase’, a green glazed earthenware vessel featuring raised Egyptian motifs in a design so rare the only other one known to us is to be found within the collection of the V&A Museum (1).

Although highly stylised, a winged scarab appears in the lower section while versions of hieroglyphic symbols fill the sides and upper sections of a main scene clearly based around the worship of the fertility god Min. He stands with his arms raised behind him, which in the original ancient pose was a means of balancing his flail sceptre, but in this case is instead located as if ‘floating’ behind him, crossed with the royal crook (2). Similarly, his ‘ithyphallic credentials’ as fertility god are missing too, presumably so the piece could fit into the standard British home without causing undue offence.

Made between 1936 and 1940 in Woodville, Derbyshire, the distinctive sunburst motif on the base of the vessel identifies this as a piece of Bretby Art Pottery, a studio founded by William Ault and his colleague Henry Tooth who had previously worked with famed designer Dr. Christopher Dresser (3) who himself had great interest in ancient Egyptian art.

Yet for us the most intriguing thing about our rare vase is its other less obvious if rather more profound connection with Egypt – and the most famous archaeological discovery of all time. For the potteries and brickworks of Bretby (and the coalmines of adjoining Stanhope Bretby) were once part of an estate owned by George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert (4).

Better known to history as the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, he and Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, thereby triggering the huge wave of Egyptomania of which our Bretby vase is part. And not only were bricks stamped with the Bretby name shipped over to Egypt to build Carter’s dig house aka ‘Castle Carter’ in Luxor (5), one of Tutankhamen’s royal epithets was ‘beloved of Min’, the god named on the pharaoh’s linen wrappings, on his jewellery and featured so prominently on our special vase who own creation was so obviously influenced by post-1922 ‘Tutmania’.

SKU: EM529

Dimensions: Height 27cm