Porcelain

To a somewhat earlier date belong the moulded reproductions of animals, vegetables, and fruit so well represented in the Schreiber collection. In the case of some of the models of birds, the plumage is admirably reproduced, and in a sufficiently bold style. Notice especially some covered dishes in the form of partridges and doves. There was a sale of these ‘Chelsea Tureens in the shape of hen and chickens, swans, rabbits, carp, etc.,’ in 1756.

How brilliant and decorative in general effect was some of the ware made by Sprimont in his later days may be well seen in the collection presented to South Kensington by Miss Emily Thomson. It consists chiefly of plates and cups with grounds of deep Mazarin blue, and more especially of the rich claret or maroon of Chelsea (Pl. xliii.). Technically, however, many of these pieces are very imperfect—the thick glaze accumulated in pools and fissured by cracks, the painting rude—and yet for all this a plate of this ware which has found its way by some accident into an adjacent case, full of the finest Sèvres of the best period, shines out from its surroundings like a jewel.

The single figures and groups are mentioned in the earliest advertisements—some of the plain white statuettes date back probably to the first days of the works. Here the English potters, in applying the soft paste covered with a thick, brilliant glaze to such a purpose, were breaking fresh ground. The crispness and the finish of the Dresden statuettes they could never attain to with these materials. The English figures and groups, whether made at Chelsea or elsewhere, are generally wanting in sharpness and precision of outline, a consequence in great measure of the thick-flowing glaze. In the kiln they had to be supported by an elaborate system of struts to prevent the fusible material from collapsing, and this alone must have hampered the modeller in the selection of the design. Many of these English statuettes are childishly and hastily modelled, and yet here and there, perhaps almost by an accident, the modeller has succeeded in giving a naïve charm and vivacity to the little figure that disarms all criticism. I could point to perhaps a dozen examples in our museums to illustrate this. Many of these statuettes are disfigured by the tawdry gilding, and by the ugly rococo or ‘scroll’ bases which are always present in the Chelsea examples. The colouring is distinguished by the skilful use of pale and gradated tints: the greenish turquoise, the rouge d’or—both the English and the French tints—and the pea green, are—thanks, perhaps, to the crystalline glaze into which these colours melt—boldly combined without any unpleasant effect223 (Pl. xliv.).

PLATE XLIII. CHELSEA

Sprimont, who after all is perhaps the most interesting figure in the history of English porcelain, was after the year 1761 constantly interrupted by ill-health, and the outturn of the kilns was for several years very irregular; finally in 1769 the remaining stock was sold by auction. The next year, the contents of the factory, the moulds, the models—in wax, brass, or lead—the mills and the presses were purchased privately by Duesbury en bloc, greatly to the disappointment of Wedgwood, who had his eye upon certain of the models. Duesbury also took over the lease of the Chelsea works, and carried them on conjointly with his main factory at Derby until the year 1784. In that year, on the expiration of the already prolonged lease, the factory at Chelsea was finally abandoned and the kilns pulled down.

The sales which had previously taken place at Burnsall’s in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, were now held at Mr. Christie’s ‘in his great room, late the Royal Academy, in Pall Mall.’ It was there that ‘Messrs. Duesbury and Co.’ disposed at intervals of the produce of the combined works. But the history of Chelsea porcelain as a genre apart comes to an end with the departure of Sprimont. During the remaining years of their existence, the Chelsea works formed merely a dependency of those at Derby.

As to the marks used at Chelsea, of the early incised triangle, which was formerly ascribed to Bow, we have already spoken. The anchor in relief on a raised oval cartouche (Pl. e. 69) is found on relatively early ware; it is associated with a waxy, translucent paste, and a simple decoration without gilding. The mark, par excellence, of Chelsea is the red anchor (Pl. e. 70), but on richly decorated pieces, and especially those with much gilding, the anchor is often inscribed in gold.

Bow.—From the beginning of the eighteenth century to the year 1744 there is no trace of the issue of any English patent relating to the manufacture of porcelain. In the latter year, however, a specification was registered according to which Edward Heylyn, of the parish of Bow, merchant, and Thomas Frye, of the parish of West Ham, painter, professed to make porcelain, by mixing with ‘an earth the produce of the Cherokee nation in America, called by the natives Unaker,’ a glass composed of flint and potash. This unaker, no doubt a kind of kaolin (we are told that the sand and mica had to be carefully washed away), was much talked of at this time (especially in Quaker circles), and its use preceded by some years that of the Cornish china-clay.

Possibly something resembling porcelain was made at Bow for a short time with these incongruous materials; but in the winter of 1748-49 a second patent

Plate XLIV.

Chelsea. Coloured enamels.

was taken out, this time by Frye alone, ‘for a new method of making a certain ware which is not inferior in beauty and fineness, and is rather superior in strength than the earthenware that is brought from the East Indies, and is commonly known by the name of China, Japan, or porcelain ware.’ In the description of the materials employed under the vague denomination of ‘a virgin earth’ produced by the calcination, grinding, and washing of certain animals, vegetables, and fossils, we probably have, as Professor Church has pointed out, the first mention of bone-ash as a material for porcelain. According to the specification, the paste should contain four-ninths by weight of the ‘virgin earth,’ and taking this to mean bone-ash, this proportion corresponds most closely with the amount of phosphate of lime found by Professor Church in some of the fragments from the site of the works which we shall describe directly. Frye’s glaze was to be compounded from a mixture of red lead, saltpetre and sand, with the addition of a small quantity of smalt, to correct the yellow colour of the paste.224

Thomas Frye was an artist of some standing who, towards the close of his life, ‘scraped’ some mezzotints still valued by collectors. He died in 1762, and in his epitaph it is claimed for him that he was ‘the inventor and first manufacturer of porcelain in England.’ The works of which Frye was the manager before the failure of his health in 1759 were situated close to the high road just beyond the bridge over the river Lea. Close by, in 1868, when making some excavations for a drain in the grounds of a match-factory, a number of fragments of porcelain were found, among them pieces of plain white with prunus ‘sprigs’ in relief, and others poorly decorated with under-glaze blue. Some of these fragments were evidently ‘wasters.’ With them were found some broken ‘seggars,’ and, what is still more interesting, a circular cake of frit, so that the site of the kilns must have been near at hand.225

The model of the Bow factory, we are told, was taken from that at Canton, in China. It would be interesting to know to what building the reference is made, for it is doubtful whether porcelain was ever made at Canton. In any case, the name given to the factory, ‘The New Canton Works,’ is interesting. Here in the east of London, one was then, as now, perceptibly nearer to China and the East Indies than at Chelsea. The river and the docks are at hand, and there is indeed only one stage—a long one, it is true—between us and Canton. So at Bow we find the Oriental decoration more prevalent and surviving longer than elsewhere.

The outturn of the kilns, like that of Chelsea, was sold periodically by auction, but the sales took place in the city for the most part, and the principal warehouse was in Cornhill. Though so difficult to identify nowadays, a large quantity of porcelain must have been produced by the Bow factory during the thirty years of its independent existence. Like its rival at Chelsea, the works had many ups and downs, and Crowther, the proprietor, became bankrupt in 1763. Compared with Chelsea, however, the bulk of the ware produced was no doubt of a common and cheap kind. Sprimont, in his ‘Case of the Undertaker,’ says somewhat contemptuously, ‘The chief endeavours at Bow have been towards making a more ordinary ware for common use.’ This is, of course, the dictum of a rival, but the Bow firm, in their advertisements, only claim to provide ‘china suitable for gentlemen’s kitchens, for private families and taverns.’

There has been the widest difference of opinion as to the actual specimens of porcelain that may with certainty be classed as the produce of the kilns at Bow. The earliest dated pieces are of a very modest kind—certain little cylindrical ink-pots. There is one in the collection formerly at Jermyn Street, with the inscription ‘Made at New Canton, 1751’; another in a private collection is dated a year earlier. The execution is rough, and the hastily coloured decoration of flowers is in the Japanese style. Some little time after this, in 1753, we find proof that the kilns were turning out much more ware than the proprietor could find painters to decorate.226 They advertise in a Birmingham newspaper for ‘painters in the blue and white potting way and enamelers in china-ware’; also for ‘painters brought up in the Snuff-box way, Japanning, Fan-painting, etc.’ They are at the same time in search of persons ‘who can model small figures in clay neatly.’ Such advertisements seem to come from a commercial house with a large but perhaps irregular outturn. Sprimont would probably have exercised more care in the selection of his artists.

There is a famous punch-bowl in the British Museum which is above all the pièce justificative of the Bow porcelain works. On the inside of the cover of the box in which it is preserved is a long inscription, signed at the foot by T. Craft, and with the date 1790.227 Thomas Craft, formerly an enamel-painter at Bow, was probably at that time a very old man. This bowl, he tells us, was made at Bow about 1760, and painted by him ‘in what we used to call the old Japan taste, a taste at that time much esteemed by the then Duke of Argyle.’ This is interesting. Craft refers probably to the so-called ‘partridge and wheatsheaf’ style, and the duke was doubtless a collector of this ware, like his contemporaries at Chantilly and the Palais Royal. But the decoration of this bowl has unfortunately nothing Japanese about it, except to some degree in the colour of the enamels employed. The heavy wreaths made up of minute flowers, upon which Mr. Craft tells us that he expended two dwts. of gold and about a fortnight of his time, take their inspiration rather from Meissen. (Compare the wreaths, Pl. xlv. 2.) The works, he continues, which employed ninety painters and about two hundred turners, throwers, etc.,228 had now, in 1790, ‘like Shakespeare’s cloud-capt towers, etc.,’ shared the fate of ‘the famous cities of Troy, Carthage, etc.’ The site was occupied by a manufactory of turpentine and some small tenements. Mr. Craft, however, tells us that he never used this punch-bowl but in particular respect of his company, and he hopes that those to whom it may pass may be equally abstemious. It is at present in the charge of the trustees of the British Museum.

Many of the more elaborate figures and highly finished vases classed as ‘Bow’ in the Schreiber collection at South Kensington are now regarded by most specialists as the production, some of the Derby works, and others of the Chelsea and even the Worcester kilns. In view of the uncertainty and difference of opinion about the ware that is to be attributed to Bow, it is important to note the physical qualities of undoubted specimens. Professor Church lays stress upon the general thickness of the ware, the remarkable translucency of the thinner parts, and upon the fact that the transmitted light is of a somewhat yellowish tint, not greenish, as in the Worcester porcelain. The glaze, though nearly white, is of a pale straw colour, and it tends to accumulate round the reliefs; it contains much lead, and is liable to become iridescent and discoloured (English Porcelain, p. 31). I would add that a majority of the undoubted examples—I rely especially upon those collected by the late Sir A. W. Franks, now in the British Museum—are distinguished by a certain dirty and speckled appearance of the surface of the glaze. I think that the Bow china has been less influenced than other of our wares by French and German examples. Apart from the Oriental decoration of some of the earlier pieces, it is on the whole a very English ware.

PLATE XLV. 1—CHELSEA, COLOURED ENAMELS

2—BOW, COLOURED ENAMELS

The process of transfer-printing, which had been first applied to china by Sadler of Liverpool about the year 1750, and which had been in use at perhaps as early a date on the enamels of Battersea, where Hancock was working at this time, was employed a few years later at Bow.229 A preliminary outline was sometimes printed under the glaze, and this subsequently enlivened by enamel colours laid on by hand, as we see on some barbarously painted dishes with Chinese subjects in the British Museum. This transfer-printing is an essentially English process: it has since been carried round the world in the wake of our Staffordshire pottery, and the process has even been applied to porcelain in Japan. To the general adoption of this mechanical process, more than to any other cause, we may attribute the dying out of the school of artist-craftsmen who painted on china, and the extinction of all feeling for the decorative value of the designs applied to the ware.

I would call attention to some small figures in the collection formerly in the Geological Museum. These little statuettes are in a white glazed ware of a slightly greenish tint, and they are attributed to Bow. The ‘Draped Warrior’ and the ‘Seated Nuns’ appear to be taken from models of a considerably earlier period, and their artistic merit is undeniable.

John Bacon, the fashionable sculptor of George iii.’s time, is said to have found employment, when young, both as a modeller and painter of porcelain. He was certainly apprenticed in 1755 to a Mr. Crispe of Bow Churchyard, the proprietor of some pottery-works at Lambeth, and he may very likely have worked for Crowther, at Bow, after the expiration of his apprenticeship.

A dagger or sword with one or more dots near the hilt, associated with an anchor, is the mark especially characteristic of the ware made at Bow (Pl. e. 71), but much porcelain attributed to this factory carries no mark. A monogram formed of the letters T and F found on some early ware is perhaps to be referred to Thomas Frye, but the Worcester factory also used this mark (Pl. e. 72).

Longton Hall.—It has lately been recognised that porcelain was made in the Staffordshire potteries, probably as early as the middle of the century.230 This was at Longton Hall, in the borough of Stoke-upon-Trent. From an advertisement in a Birmingham paper (July 27, 1752) we learn that W. Littler and Co. were ready to supply ‘a great variety of ornamental porcelain in the most fashionable and genteel taste.’ It was Mr. Nightingale, I think, who first traced certain pieces of china, marked with two L’s crossed (Pl. e. 81), to Littler’s factory. This porcelain had previously been attributed to Bow. The Longton Hall ware has no claim to any artistic merit. A crude blue is the prevailing ground colour, and the contorted shapes copy rudely the rococo of Sprimont’s Chelsea ware. The mouldings on the dishes and plates often take the form of leaves. Some of this porcelain is exceptionally thin compared with other English wares of this comparatively early period. The flower-painting on the reserved panels of the plates should, however, be noticed. The carefully executed bunches of roses, somewhat realistically treated, are perhaps the earliest specimens of a style very prevalent at a later time in England, one which found its most famous exponent in Billingsley’s work at Nantgarw and elsewhere. William Duesbury, a native of the district, was working at Longton Hall early in the fifties as a painter in enamel. Nothing is known of this factory after the year 1758.231 There is some reason to believe that it fell into the hands of Duesbury, but this is a disputed question. Professor Church has analysed several specimens of the Longton Hall china. It contains no bone-ash, and is in composition very close to the early Chelsea ware.

CHAPTER   XXI

ENGLISH PORCELAIN—(continued)

THE SOFT PASTE OF DERBY, WORCESTER, CAUGHLEY, COALPORT, SWANSEA, NANTGARW, LOWESTOFT, LIVERPOOL, PINXTON, ROCKINGHAM, CHURCH GRESLEY, SPODE, AND BELLEEK

DERBY.—Porcelain of some kind was probably made at Derby not much later than the date of the first establishment of Frye’s works at Bow. Mr. Bemrose quotes entries from the work-book of Duesbury, which show that during the years 1751-53 he was busy enamelling the products not only of the ‘Chellsea and Bogh’ kilns, but that, although resident in London, he received work from Derby also. Indeed the price, eight shillings, that he got for enamelling ‘one pair of Darby figars large,’ is higher than his usual charge for painting the Chelsea statuettes (Bow, Chelsea, and Derby Porcelain).232

William Duesbury was a Staffordshire man. As early as the year 1742, when he was only seventeen, he was working in London as an enameller for weekly wages. This we know from his work-book, which has been preserved. It would be interesting to know what it was that he enamelled at this early date. From the same book we learn that in the years 1751-53 he was in London decorating china figures for the most part. These he distinguishes as Bow, or Bogh, Chellsea, Darby, and Staffordshire. In 1752 he paid a bill of £6, 19s. for colours, although at that time little gold was used by him. Among other entries in his work-book at this period we find the following note: ‘How to color the group, a gentleman Busing a Lady—gentlm a gold trimd cote, a pink wastcot crimson and trimd with gold and black breeches and socs, the lade a flourd sack with yellow robings, a black stomegar, her hare black, his wig powdrd.’ Each piece that he coloured is carefully noted, and the price that he obtained given. For instance, ‘pair of le Dresden figars,’ ‘Chellsea Nurs,’ ‘a pair of Baccosses,’ ‘a hartychoake.’233 We have already referred to Duesbury’s connection with Littler’s works,—we may note that his father was living at Longton Hall at this time.

In December 1756 there was a sale in London, by order of the ‘Derby Porcelain Manufactory,’ of figures, services, etc., ‘after the finest Dresden models.’ For some time the ‘Derby China Company’ sold their goods through their factor at ‘Oliver Cromwell’s Drawing-Room’ near the Admiralty. It would seem that in 1756 Duesbury entered into some kind of partnership, at Derby, with Heath and Planché, the first a banker and proprietor of pottery-works at Cockpit Hill, and the latter a ‘china-maker,’ of whom various more or less apocryphal stories are told. All we can safely say is that Planché had probably been working for some time at Derby as a modeller of figures.

In the year 1758 the Derby works were enlarged and the number of workmen doubled, and this change has been coupled with the closing of Littler’s factory at Longton Hall about the same time. But from this date to the year 1769, all that we know of the Derby factory is derived from a few advertisements in London papers. It is indeed a very remarkable fact that, in spite of the most persevering researches—for how thoroughly the ground has been gleaned we can judge by looking through the elaborate works of Haslem, Bemrose, and the late Mr. Nightingale—we can hardly point to a single specimen of porcelain made at Derby before the year 1770, nor do we know of any mark that can be assigned to an earlier period than this. Can it be that up to this time the works were chiefly occupied in copying the wares, and perhaps the marks, not only of Dresden, but also of Chelsea and Bow?

When the Chelsea factory and its contents were sold in 1769, it was Duesbury, and not the Derby China Company, who was the purchaser. After the year 1775, when the Bow works were also purchased, he had, with the exception of the Worcester manufactory, practically no rival in the field.

We may take the year 1770 as the turning-point in the history of English porcelain. In France, by this time, the rococo of Louis xv.’s reign was already giving way to the simpler, and in part more classical, forms that distinguish the next reign, for it is common knowledge that the style known as Louis xvi. came into vogue several years before the accession of that king. In England the change can be best traced in the work of the silversmith, seeing that in such work there can be no uncertainty as to the date. Already, before the end of the sixties, we find in the silver plate then made outlines formed of simple curves and even straight lines replacing the troubled rococo scrolls, and by the year 1770 the new classical forms have carried the whole field. And in like manner the china made by Duesbury, both at Chelsea and Derby, follows the new fashion.

But the vases bearing the Chelsea-Derby mark of an anchor crossing the down-stroke of the letter D (Pl. e. 73) differ from those made by Sprimont not only in outline. A new scheme of decoration has come in, one that continued with no radical change for the next fifty years and more. Let us take the Chelsea-Derby vase in the Jones collection—it stands in company with several others of the Sprimont rococo type. Notice the oblique fluted mouldings of the upper part (a motif taken directly from the silversmith), which are accentuated by deep blue and gold lines on a white ground (this is a scheme of decoration above all characteristic of Derby china). The reserved panels on the body of the vase are painted with pastoral subjects. Here there is little change, but around these panels the ground is completely covered with flowers of various kinds—each species can be made out, but full-blown double roses predominate. These full-blown roses are a note that distinguishes English porcelain from this time onwards. As they become larger, and occupy a more prominent place, the painting loses all trace of decorative feeling. Billingsley carried them in his wanderings to all the porcelain factories of England, and we are finally landed in the monstrosities of Rockingham and the insipidities of Nantgarw.

One point we have omitted to mention in our description of the Chelsea-Derby vase at South Kensington. The handles, winged figures somewhat classically treated, are of unglazed ware. This is an example of the famous Derby biscuit, or bisque, as it is sometimes called, which we now know was made as early as 1771. The greatest care was taken in the preparation of this biscuit ware; any piece with the slightest defect was rejected. The material allows of a sharpness and high finish which would be lost in the thick covering of the glazed ware. The paste in many of the examples has acquired a somewhat shiny surface, as if covered with a skin of glaze. The best known specimens date from the last years of the century, when Spengler, a modeller from Zurich, was engaged by the second Duesbury. In them we see exemplified that mixture of the sentimental and the pseudo-classical so much admired at this time. The shepherd with his dog (there is an example at South Kensington) is taken from a Roman relief, the head perhaps from an Antinous. The shepherdess has been reading Richardson, if not Jean Jacques, and they both take life very seriously.

We find, however, the Chelsea-Derby mark on enamelled figures that differ little from the earlier and more frivolous type. These survivals, as it were, of the rococo school stand no longer upon a scroll pediment, but on a rocky ground, amid careful reproductions of natural objects, stumps of trees, shells, or what not. The colours, too, have become somewhat stronger; the pale, greenish blue of the earlier pieces is replaced by a fuller turquoise hue.