SUFFRAGETTE TEA SERVICE

Complete tea service designed by Sylvia Pankhurst, c.1909 (23)

Footnotes

A RARE COMPLETE SUFFRAGETTE TEA SET DESIGNED BY SYLVIA PANKHURST WITH FINE PROVENANCE.

No firm produced pottery and porcelain in support of the women's suffrage movement commercially, so pieces such as this service were commissioned by the movement itself. In early 1909 the WSPU commissioned Williamson's of Longton, Staffordshire to produce wares for use in the refreshment room at the Prince's Skating Rink Exhibition held in Knightsbridge for two weeks in May 1909. Each piece bears Sylvia Pankhurst's 'Angel of Freedom' in the WSPU colours, a motif designed specifically for the exhibition. After the exhibition the china was sold off in sets of 22 pieces to raise funds for the cause. Votes for Women of 13 May 1910 noted that some was still available to purchase; 'a breakfast set for two, 11s; small tea set, 15s; whole tea set £1; or pieces may be had singly' (Crawford, Elizabeth, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928, 1999, p.108). The motif also appears on many other items such as the illuminated addresses awarded to prisoners, badges and the medallion also included in this sale. Christabel Pankhurst wrote of the opportunity that the exhibition afforded for supporters to purchase a wide variety of items in the WSPU colours and thus spread the message through merchandising: 'every member of the Union will become an advertiser for the movement, and will bring to the Prince's Skating Rink a dozen, or a score, or an even larger number men and women of her acquaintance who... will appreciate for the first time the strength of the woman's movement' (Crawford, p.137).

Provenance: A letter included in the lot from the daughter of the original owner, describes how the tea set was originally purchased c.1913 by her mother Lily Kerran, an ardent supporter of women's suffrage, socialist and free thinker. Lily's husband Ferdinand Louis Kerran (1883-1949) was a prominent activist in the British Socialist Party and, from 1920, a member of the executive of the new Communist Party of Great Britain. He had a successful photography business in Bexleyheath with his brother Frederick, who produced postcards, and became an semi-official photographer of WSPU members and events. During the first war he was interned in the Islington workhouse from whence he escaped to New York, rearrested and returned to Brixton prison. As a leading member of the communist party he worked along former suffragettes such as Sylvia Pankhurst, who wrote to his wife on his death in 1949. The tea set was then offered by descendants of the Kerran family at Christie's South Kensington on 10 March 1995 and purchased by the present owner.