A taste for Parian? Production, mediation and reception of statuary porcelain c.1835 – c.1851

Abstract
This thesis explores the materiality, form, function and iconography of figurative statuary porcelain (aka parian ware) 1844 – 1862 and, in doing so, situates these manufactured products within the socio-cultural and socio-economic context of mid-nineteenth-century ceramic production. Contesting current historiography which, by and large, situates the wares as collectable antiques I employ a broad yet cohesive methodological approach to explore the medium in three main chapters: Production, Mediation and Reception.

Employing scientific and technical analyses, Chapter One ‘Production’, evidences a gradual evolution of materials and manufacturing techniques, the ever-changing strengths and limitations of the medium impacting upon design, form and function of the finished object. Chapter Two ‘Mediation’ explores distribution through national and parochial art unions and compares ‘incidental’ acquisitions to those purchased purposefully through retail; the Art Union’s imposition of ‘legitimate’ taste perceived here as Bourdieusian class indicator.

Employing contemporary theories regarding individual psychology in the conception of taste, the final chapter, ‘Reception’, takes a broader analytical approach and places the wares within known lived environments. Here, I instil the wares with a degree of agency, the statuary activated/animated as tangible expressions of a ‘material self’, the wares imbued with meaning over and above the immediate material iconographies.

From nationalistic intent to perhaps more surprising intersexual and homoerotic inference, figurative parian ware brings into question preconceived notions of normative bourgeois sexuality and gender. These underexplored objects, sometimes representative of androgyny, of hermaphrodites, of women dressed as men (yet never men dressed as women!) invoke a whole spectrum of sexual and gender possibilities for debate. Thus, the final chapter, whilst opening new avenues into social and domestic discourse also draws relationships between taste, ornamental statuary and the performative nature of identity.

I conclude that a medium, described as ‘marble for the masses,’ held none of the sculpted, classicised qualities associated with Parian marble, and that a ‘Taste for Parian’ was indeed, merely a taste for mass-produced figurative porcelain.