James Hadley, Manufacturer: Worcester Royal Porcelain Company
Date:
1882
Medium:
Porcelain, enamel
Size:
Depth: 3 1/4″
Width: 7″
Height: 6 1/4″
Decorative Arts Acquisitions Endowment established by The Friends of the American Wing; and purchase with exchange funds from Gift of Anna Dorsey Cooke in Loving Memory of her Sister, Elsie Dorsey, and Gift of John Beverley Riggs BMA 2006.38

Connection to Oscar Wilde

Transcript

[Aaron Henkin] The production of Patience that this pot commemorates toured throughout the US. Oscar
Wilde, the notorious British aesthetic writer, was sent around the country to publicize it.
[David Park Curry] The inscription says, Fearful consequences through the laws of natural selection and
evolution of living up to one’s teapot. That’s a pun on Oscar Wilde saying, I’m going to live up to my blue and
white china, which meant he was going to, of course, be aesthetic at all costs. But at the same time, you hear
echoes of the disturbing theories of Darwin that were published at about this time.
[Aaron Henkin] So depending on who owned this teapot, it could either be a satire of the Aesthetic
Movement and all that it stood for, or it could be a way of proudly proclaiming your allegiance to it.