White versus Cream swans

Hello swanologists. Just wondered if white small swans (154) are rarer, than the cream? I have noticed on TradeMe that people ask if it is white or cream and more often than not they are cream. Is the white more rare and therefore more valuable?

My Nana worked at Crown Lynn and so I have some swans that she would have collected during her time working there. She also had a wonderful little saucer plate with a grey cat face on it, which was just like their grey cat. It was also Crown Lynn.

I have a white crown lynn swan with 2065 only on the back, I assume this is rarer than the 154, as I dont see them up for sale much?

I have three Crown Lynn small swans in total, each with a totally different backstamp?! They chopped and changed a bit didn't they.

Hi, part of the Crown Lynn charm is the way they chopped and changed things around!!

Your little swan is a more recent one than the 154...same piece but made in the years Crown Lynn ran the Titian factory at Takanini..they renumbered for some strange reason..My Auckland Museum notes date the first 2065s and the 2066s (the bigger 170) to March 1971.

That is my understanding anyway -and the 2147 (the rarer medium size) were only made in limited numbers from April 1981 and dont date back to the earlier times of the 154s and the 170s.

Welcome to our site!! If we dont have a pic of any of your pieces we would love to add to our galleries.

Hi, my father recently sold a cream 170 swan on trademe. One of the questions asked was "is it cream or white" this got us curious and we were just trying to find out what the difference was in the cream and white versions of the swan, is one rarer than the other? I read on another webpage someone commenting that white was produced in the war days when there were shortages of pigment? Thanks, Paula

I'm not even sure that Crown Lynn had a cream glaze, as I haven't come across any evidence to say this ...... yet.
My sister got a Crown Lynn large swan for her 21st in 1961 and I wasn't very old, but I would swear that it was pure white. Alas now 52 years later it is a deep creamy yellow. My brother-in-law smoked and I wonder if this is why it changed colour?

The swan has definitely not become cream from discolouring with age! or smoke! as it has never been in a house with smokers, it hasn't been sitting in the sun either.
But the main reason I say it is cream is that if you look up inside the neck it is perfectly glazed cream up inside there as well.

Thinking about this I've come up with the thought that the basic glaze ingredients can change the colour of the glaze. For example different sources of feldspar or dolomite will change the appearance/colour. Using an Australian dolomite makes a white glaze turn out yellow, whereas when using a NZ dolomite it turns out pure white. I know that is an extreme example, but it helps me to understand what could have happened.

Do people prefer Cream/Off White swans or do they want White ones?

A Black one please! ..the last black swan on TM one went for $2000. OMG!
Any ideas how I can turn my white one Black?!!

You wouldn't sell it anyway!

Ernie Cooper recently visited the Portage Museum and he mentioned that the cream swans were the earlier ones as due to the problem of not being able to access one glaze ingredient they had to change the recipe and the swans turned out white from then on.  If I remember correctly the problem ingredient was zirconium.
The same goes for the cream or white vases.