An rare and amusing Marine pattern plate/charger designed by Walter Moorcroft in 1960 from pictures of 'exotic fish and sea creatures' created by his second wife Liz whom he married in 1959. Liz was an artist and inspired him in much of his later work. Marine is a rare pattern as, like 'Caribbean', it was only produced for two years between 1962 and 1964. This comical piece shows an angel fish, a seahorse and a conch shell amongst seaweed, all on a graduated light blue ground.
Charger is 25.5cm (10") in diameter and stands 3cm (1¼") and is in lovely condition with a few surface scratches to the clear over-glaze. Some very minor glaze crazing, most noticeable on the pale glaze under the foot, this crazing is quite common on vintage Moorcroft pieces and will not detract from the value or desirability. There is a firing flaw in the clear glaze where a bubble has popped which can be seen as a lighter area on one of the seaweed stems (see the last photo, and use the zoom to examine this further), however we have had a good look at this through a loupe and it's clearly happened during the firing as the 'edges' of the glaze have melted back leaving a smooth pit. Sounds worse than it is, but these flaws were quite common and whilst it wouldn't pass muster at Moorcroft today, in the post-war ear and just after rationing, few pieces were scrapped unless they were badly flawed or broken.
This piece is from our own collection and we have decided to sell a small number of pieces to make up for the recent theft of 20 pieces from the tetbury shop!
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