Large, attractive Doulton Faience vase attributed to Frances M Linnell, dated 1877. The vase is of inverted broad baluster-form with foot and collar neck. Hand painted with stylised white paper-flower (bougainvillea) vine around the body on a dark olive-green ground. Decorative geometric band to the neck. Impressed Doulton Lambeth Faience mark and impressed date 1877. The vase measures 31.5 cm in height.
 
Doulton Lambeth launched its Faience wares in 1873 as a revival of painted majolica. However unlike majolica, Doulton Faience was decorated on a biscuit (once-fired) body. Pieces were then fired again after being decorated and fired a third time after glazing. Colours and glaze would expand and contract at different rates leading to the crazing that is now almost always associated with Doulton Faience. Decoration called for confident brushwork because of the porous nature of biscuit bodies as well as good knowledge of coloured oxides used (many of which changed completely in colour when fired). Because of this the artists (often accomplished in their own right) tended to specialise solely in Faience. The technique leaded itself to naturalistic representations (commonly of flowers and foliage) but also to figural Art Nouveau designs popular in the early 1900s. Output of Doulton Faience dwindled after c1910 and was discontinued during the early part of WWI.
Frances M Linnell worked at Doulton from c1877 to 1885. She specialised in painting flowers, increasingly on impasto ware after 1880.