At it again......

Found a few items that 'caught my eye'.....need help with age/year/ sites to find out more for this one though. Any information, as usual, is greatly appreciated! I've never see anything like it before and none of the pictures of Tazza's/Comport/Compote dishes look like it. There doesn't seem to be anything on the Thomas Rathbone & Company sites either.

DISH: Is this a Comport or Compote? Is it a fruit dish?



BASE: The base has T R & Co1 (or T) England. numbers 678 in gold. Swan and ribbon below with 'Victor' in. Have trawled for days and only found one large vase with 'victor' and the same markings. Nothing like the dish I have. Also the vase had a different patter flower in it.

some sources seem to suggest that a Comport/Compote is the same thing as a Tazza, and others suggest there is a difference. I have to say, I always believed they were different and would go with the example given by the Bristol museum, that a Tazza is a plate that is raised up on a stand/foot, and a comport/compote is a bowl that is raised up on a stand/foot.

As for what yours is, you haven't shown a profile view so it's hard to see how deep the dish is but from the top it looks deep enough to be classed as a bowl - so i'll go with Comport.

Dating your piece it's definitely around the turn of the century - not least because Thomas Rathbone & Co only began in the late 1890s, but also the style is very much of that period. The organic, leaf-like shape is typical of the Art Nouveau period and the handle is almost rococco.

If you're selling it, you might, very loosely, and only just about get away with calling it Flow Blue (that is, that the blue flows into the surrounding glaze). But i think real flow blue collectors would see it just as a usual Blue&White transfer piece that has bled a bit, and as sprayed blue border. Whilst it's out of fashion for many collectors in the UK, the Americans still seem to love this kind of thing.

http://www.museum.bristolblueglass.com/glass-comport-and-tazza-1864-by-molineaux-webb/#.UDspx8HN_kc

This is another piece by Thomas Rathbone & Co - the Shanghai pattern - wth a similar scrolling baroque style.
Dated 1898.

http://www.rafa.com/d067pix.htm

A little intrigued by the '& COL' - could that stand for 'Colonial'? China made for export? Or a factory set up abroad?

- to add, the shape is Shanghai; the transfer is of a Swiss scene.