Antique Earthenware
Earthenware is low-fired porous pottery, glazed to hold liquid, and it covers the domestic and ornamental wares that filled European and Asian households from the 18th century onward.
Antique Earthenware
Earthenware is clay fired at a relatively low temperature. The body stays porous, so a glaze does the work of holding liquid. It's the oldest and most widespread form of pottery, and it stayed the standard material for table and ornamental wares across Europe long after porcelain arrived. Refined earthenware bodies made industrially in Britain from the 18th century put printed, moulded and figure wares into ordinary homes.
The heading is broad, and British domestic pottery dominates it. Staffordshire appears in 215 of 768 titles, pottery in 154, English in 127. The form you'll meet most often is a 19th-century Staffordshire figure or figure pair: spaniels, greyhounds, poodles, lions, cows and calves, royal and theatrical portraits, and flatbacks modelled plain at the rear for a mantel. Pairs are characteristic, with pair in 125 titles.
Around a fifth of the category is blue-and-white transfer-printed table ware, with platters, tureens, dishes and chargers, and patterns named in titles such as Elephant, Europa, Castle, Net and Willow. Roughly one in six is tin-glazed: delft, French and continental faience, and majolica. Japanese earthenware, chiefly Satsuma, runs to about one in twenty, and country and utility pieces make up a visible minority, taking in confit pots, bread crocks, dairy and pancheon bowls, jelly moulds and jardinieres.
Dating is loose across the category. The dated field runs 1700 to 1940, with 306 listings carrying a clean year, but the commonest entry is not a year at all: 231 listings simply say 19th Century, against 73 for the 1880s and 56 for Victorian. The 18th century is a real secondary presence, and the sampled material runs well past the stated floor, with Persian and pre-Columbian vessels and Chinese Han and Tang tomb pottery all appearing.
Where The Range Splits
Number counts for more here than in most pottery categories. Pairs cluster in the upper half of the sampled range, and multi-piece groups sit at the very top: a fifty-nine-piece dinner service, a collection of fourteen meat drainers, twelve Hispano-Moresque chargers. A single Victorian majolica dish or a Prattware pot lid sits at the bottom.
Naming lifts a piece. Titles that carry a pattern name, a factory or a decorator run higher than those that don't, and among the 34 Satsuma titles the signed and workshop-attributed pieces with a Meiji date reach the top while unsigned bowls sit far lower. Vague titles stay cheap.
Then scale and age. Large appears in 101 titles, and the biggest recorded pieces are country wares rather than showpieces, including a 69cm tian bowl from the South of France and a 53cm terracotta dairy bowl. Earlier and unusual forms push upward too: 18th-century delft posset pots and garden urns, 17th-century tiles, pre-1700 vessels.
Antique Earthenware Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for earthenware, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
Pairs are a habit in this category. More than a hundred earthenware titles on Sellingantiques use the word pair, many of them Staffordshire dogs, spaniels and greyhounds.
The Antique Earthenware Glossary
- Earthenware
- Porous low-fired pottery, glazed to make it watertight. Several sampled titles say porcelain, stoneware or china inside this heading, so the label isn't applied consistently.
- Flatback
- A Staffordshire figure modelled flat at the rear so it stands against a wall or on a mantel shelf. Sixteen titles use the word.
- Transfer print
- A design printed from an engraved plate onto tissue, then laid onto the ware before glazing. Transfer appears in 34 titles, usually with blue and white.
- Delft and faience
- Both mean tin-glazed earthenware. Delft is the Dutch and English term, with 51 titles; faience the French and continental one, with 30, eighteen of them French.
- Majolica
- Brightly coloured relief-moulded glazed earthenware, in 48 titles. Maiolica with an i is the Italian spelling of the older tin-glazed tradition.
- Jackfield
- Black-glazed earthenware, used in the samples for cow creamers and a chicken tureen.
Antique Earthenware: Frequently Asked Questions
What does earthenware cover on Sellingantiques?
It runs from Staffordshire figures and blue-and-white tablewares through tin-glazed delft, faience and majolica to Satsuma and plain utility crocks and bowls. Almost everything is a decorative or table object of the 18th to early 20th century.
British domestic pottery dominates the titles, with Staffordshire alone in 215 of 768. A small tail of art and studio pottery exists alongside it.
Why are so many pieces sold in pairs?
Figures were made and sold facing one another for a mantel or chimneypiece, so matched sets survived together. Pair appears in 125 titles, about one in six.
Much of that is Staffordshire dogs, spaniels, greyhounds and poodles. Pairs also sit higher in the range than comparable singles.
How old is the earliest earthenware listed?
The dated field starts at 1700, but the sampled titles go well past it. Pre-Columbian and Persian vessels appear, along with Chinese Han and Tang tomb pottery and a Syro-Hittite figure said to be around 2000 BC.
Those are single appearances rather than a steady supply. The bulk of the category sits in the 19th century.
What is Satsuma and how much of the category is it?
Satsuma is Japanese crackle-glazed earthenware decorated with gilt and enamel. It appears in 34 titles, with Japanese in 31 and Meiji in 23, making the Japanese branch about one in twenty.
Forms in the samples include bowls, koro, tea caddies and Sumida Gawa mugs. Signed and studio-attributed work with a Meiji date reaches the top of the range.
Are there named makers in this category?
Not reliably. The maker extraction from these dealer descriptions returned no name carried by enough dealers to stand as a leading factory here.
What titles do carry is pattern names, and sometimes a decorator or workshop. Those named pieces run higher than unattributed ones.
How many earthenware pieces come up each year?
About 92 a year, listed by 152 different dealers over the archive. That makes it one of the broadest-based categories on Sellingantiques rather than the ground of a few specialists.
Odd forms turn up throughout: a pottery wine bin label, a bird whistle, a rugby-ball inkwell, a holy water stoup, a set of miniature delft furniture.