Moorcroft Austen’s Orchard Vase

Austen’s Orchard

THE JANE AUSTEN COLLECTION

Moorcroft designer, Emma Bossons FRSA brings Jane Austen, her novels, and the Regency Period alive in a collection launched in August 2023 at Jane Austen’s village of Chawton in Hampshire.

Designer: Emma Bossons FRSA

Shape: 46/12

Edition: 15

Size: H 30cm

 “I have so often heard Mr. Woodhouse recommend a baked apple. I believe it is the only way that Mr. Woodhouse thinks the fruit thoroughly wholesome.” -Emma, Jane Austen

To mark the 250^th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen’s older sister, Cassandra, Jane’s House planted an orchard in her name. It is thanks to Cassandra that we have an image of novelist, Jane Austen hanging in the National Gallery, and glimpses of the love and encouragement they both gave to each other in letters where Jane also details flowers and fruit growing in the garden. Verbal sparring over fruit often takes place in Austen’s novels, with her notorious Emma Woodhouse, the 21-year-old protagonist of her 1815 novel Emma, stating ‘Mrs. Elton, in all her apparatus of happiness, her large bonnet and her basket, was very ready to lead the way in gathering, accepting, or talking -- strawberries, and only strawberries, could now be thought or spoken of. -- 'The best fruit in England -- every body's favourite -- always wholesome.’

And so it is with Austen’s Orchard, plump plums, and matt-ochre coloured Ribston Pipin apples dangle temptingly from branches as ghostly gooseberry’s peek through the thicket over rings of kitchen garden strawberries, arching one over another in a decadent tumble of cadmium reds.