This is a highly collectable little piece of antique Scottish Art Pottery.
It is an attractive deep bowl / pudding bowl - but far too nice for puddings! It is more of a fine display piece of antique hand-painted Scottish Art Pottery.
It is marked Mak Merry on the base and dated 1927.
It is in good condition with no nasty chips or cracks. The glaze is generally nice and shiny - it has very small and slight evidence of some craquelure - mostly confined to the inner white circle and to the main body area on the base. You need to look at the dish very closely to see it.
My hand-decorated bowl is very Art Nouveau in feel - and it is a typically Scottish early 20th-century design.
The bowl has a central white disk - this is surrounded by a pale yellow thick band of colour - and up at the rim a mottled grey band - with black long dashes top and bottom. All around the interior are little individual posies made up of three daisy-style flower heads. I have photographed these in close-up to show how painterly these are.
There is a tiny spider hairline crack on the base near the Mak Merry mark (as photographed) - this does not show to the other side of the bowl.
DIMENSIONS; The height is 2 1/4 inches. The length is 7 1/4 inches in diameter.
UK Posting is going to be £4.95 - and this is with Royal Mail Recorded Delivery. This will be applied at the checkout.
HISTORY: The MakMerry pottery grew out of the Scottish Women's Rural Institute, which was founded in 1917 in the Scottish town Macmerry by Catherine Blair.
Catherine had previously been an active Suffragist, campaigning for 'Votes for Women' and had a history of promoting female independence and equality. She became involved in the suffragette movement was by writing countless letters to the press about the plight of women.
In 1920 MakMerry was set up as the trading arm of the Institute. Initially, members invested small sums of money and produced food items for sale – but they soon moved into producing fine craftworks as well – one of the crafts was pottery decoration. They hand-painted smaller household items such as plates, shallow bowls, lidded pots and the sweetest teapots – and all these are instantly identifiable and often featured delicate and stylized floral patterns.