3-008-631 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition: the Queen's Dessert Service, manufactured at the Royal Porcelain Works, Worcester, by W. H. Kerr, 1862. 'This costly service...is unique in its application of colour to enamels, enamel decoration to a service, and the general treatment of the design...the costliness and difficulty of production was immensely increased by no device being repeated, while each plate contains five subjects, and for the plates alone upwards of four hundred designs have been made. Painted enamels, ever since their introduction in the fifteenth century, have been greatly esteemed, and have been eagerly sought after by collectors and connoisseurs, the relief character of the painting bringing about a combination of the arts of modelling and painting...The whole of this service, we are led to understand, was produced under the immediate approval of the late Prince Consort, and the design for each article was submitted before being modelled. His late Royal Highness took the deepest interest in encouraging this manufacture'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.