A blue Jasperware patrician tray with oak leaf and acorn border surrounding a bust of John F. Kennedy in profile, all in applied white bas relief from Wedgwood. The dish measures 4 3/8" wide and the bottom is stamped "Wedgwood Made in England." The condition is good, with the only imperfection being two tiny pinhead-sized glaze nicks to the rim.
Jasper, which name means "spotted or speckled stone," is an opaque variety of chalcedony--a microcrystalline variety of the mineral quartz, and is created from various sedimentation and volcanic ash. In the 1770s, inspired by this opaque quartz, Josiah Wedgwood created Jasperware as a type of nonporous matte and unglazed stoneware in which white pottery is stained with metallic oxide colors, notably blue, dark blue, sage green, lilac, and even black and yellow. Sprigged decorations of applied white relief in neoclassical designs and classic Greek figures and mythology, commemorative cameos, and borders of oak leaf and acorn, leaf and berry, grapes and grapevines, and Acanthus are associated with Jasperware.
