Daisy Makeig-Jones built her reputation at Wedgwood on exactly this kind of fantastical, densely worked design, mottled pearl grounds populated by dragons, flames, and imagined creatures that had little precedent in the factory's more restrained neoclassical output up to that point. This double gourd-shaped vase, dated to the 1910's, carries her Celestial Dragon motif across a mottled blue pearl ground, the dragon worked in bold gilding against the mottled surface, flame motifs threading through the composition around it.
The double gourd form itself borrows from a much older Chinese ceramic tradition, a shape built from two stacked spheres of differing size, and pairing that traditional silhouette with Makeig-Jones's distinctly fantastical dragon imagery makes for an interesting collision of restraint and excess in a single object. A continuous gilded band runs along both the top rim and the base, framing the central design without competing with it. Fairyland Lustre and related dragon-pattern pieces by Makeig-Jones remain some of the most actively collected Wedgwood work from the twentieth century, prized specifically for the imaginative range she brought to a factory better known for its classical restraint.
Condition notes
Excellent antique condition. Light wear to gilding.
