The Green Frog Service : Wedgwood & Bentley's Imperial Russian Service

London: Cacklegoose Press Ltd, 1995. Book. Near Fine. Original Green Cloth, Gilt. Limited Edition of 1000 Copies. 13" x 9 7/8". Copy no. 914 of the edition of 1000 copies, of which the first 25 are a special leather-bound edition, a further 25 were for collaborators on the publication, and 350 copies were for subscribers; with 600 numbered copies for general sale. 424 pages, over 350 large detailed illustrations, 60 colour plates and more than 1000 reference illustrations, presenting for the first time the entire service in colour and monochrome plates. The crowning achievement of the great English potter Josiah Wedgwood was a dinner and dessert service decorated with hand-painted views of England, Scotland and Wales, commissioned by Empress Catherine the Great of Russia. Known as the Green Frog Service, it provides one of the finest surviving pictorial records of 18th-century Britain. Commissioned and produced in 1773-4, the Service was destined for a 'palace' Catherine was building in English Gothick style as a staging post between St Petersburg and her summer residence at Tsarskoe Selo. Surrounded by marshes, the palace was known as La Grenouillère, hence the device of a bright green frog that appears on every piece of the Service. The Empress particularly asked for views of landscape gardens, and many of the finest gardens in Britain are depicted, together with a great array of 'Antiquities' ... ruined castles and abbeys, old manor houses, Cornish dolmens ... as well as romantic landscapes, views on the Thames at London and even early industrial sites..