Definition:Creamware

Creamware is a refined, cream-colored English earthenware developed in Staffordshire around the 1760s, most closely associated with Josiah Wedgwood (who called his version ‘Queen’s Ware’). Lighter and finer than earlier lead-glazed earthenwares, creamware achieved an ivory or pale cream tone that made it a suitable substitute for more expensive Continental porcelain. Some of the earliest English dog figurines — including Staffordshire-tradition pieces from the late 18th century — were produced in creamware before the even whiter pearlware body became dominant after approximately 1780. For collectors of antique dog figurines, creamware-bodied pieces represent the earliest stratum of the English figurine tradition and are correspondingly rarer and more valuable than their later 19th-century successors.