Aesthetic Transferware

Unknown Maker, Unnamed Pattern, c. 1880.

Introduction

This website is devoted to the history of 19th-century British Aesthetic transferware. There are thousands of patterns that can be labeled Aesthetic transferware and they are so called because their style and design were inspired by the tenets of the British Aesthetic Movement, which lasted roughly from 1860 to 1900.

Here you will find information about the Aesthetic Movement, the transferware process, Aesthetic transferware, resources for further study, and an in-progress list of Aesthetic patterns, among other things.

"Art should be independent of all clap-trap - should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like."

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)