Display dish with Charles II (1630–1685) in a tree

Display dish with Charles II (1630–1685) in a tree

Thomas Toft

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

There are numerous large dishes from the late seventeenth century inscribed with the name Thomas Toft. This North Staffordshire potter, possibly of Scandinavian origin, used traditional pottery techniques but more ambitiously than any potter up to that time. Here, a white clay slip was applied over the upper surface of the charger; the design was then drawn and filled in with dark brown and orange red clay slips. The honey-colored lead glaze was applied to only this decorated surface, not to the underside, turning the stark white ground a pale yellow and harmonizing with the earth colors of the design. A lion and a unicorn, supporters of the royal coat of arms of England and Scotland, are rampant to each side of a spreading oak tree enclosing a young face by its spreading branches, with the letters "CR," for Charles Rex, below. This reference is to a popular true story that Charles II related to Samuel Pepys in 1680. After his defeat at the battle of Worcester in 1651, the young king climbed into an oak in Boscobel Wood to escape OIiver Cromwell's soldiers, and one of the men passed directly beneath the tree in which he was hiding.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Display dish with Charles II (1630–1685) in a treeDisplay dish with Charles II (1630–1685) in a treeDisplay dish with Charles II (1630–1685) in a treeDisplay dish with Charles II (1630–1685) in a treeDisplay dish with Charles II (1630–1685) in a tree

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.