Porcelain

In common with the other porcelain made at the time, the decoration, and even the shapes, of much of the early ware of Chelsea were derived from Oriental models. Of these Eastern types, the ‘wheatsheaf and partridge’ (more properly quail) was most in favour. The Chelsea imitations of the old Japanese ware are distinguished by the abundant use of a heavy iron-red enamel. There are several specimens of this ware at South Kensington, but I would call attention, above all, to a very curious compotier in the Jermyn Street collection.218 This dish has a brown rim, and round the margin a quaint decoration of foxes amid clusters of red grapes. This is a very old Chinese motif, only we should have squirrels in place of foxes. But the Chelsea ‘Kakiyemon’ never equalled that of Chantilly, or perhaps even the copies made at Bow. On the other hand, the Chelsea plates made in imitation of the brocaded ‘old Japan’ are unsurpassed among European wares (Pl. xlv). Equally early, perhaps, are the plates and dishes with decorations of flowers and birds on a large scale sprawling over the surface. In these last examples the colours are poor and heavy, and the general execution very rough. Many of the plain white pieces also belong to this early period.219

In the year 1754 Sprimont introduced the system of periodic sales by auction;220 and we can in some measure trace the progress of the manufacture in the advertisements and in the rare catalogues that have been preserved. Thus in the advertisement of the first sale of 1754 we already find mention of groups of figures. The next sale, a few months later, was made up of ‘the entire Stock of Porcelain toys … Snuff-boxes, Smelling-Bottles, Etwees, and Trinkets for Watches (mounted in Gold and unmounted) in various beautiful Shapes of an elegant Design and curiously painted in Enamel.’ There was also in this sale a large parcel of porcelain hafts for table and dessert knives and forks.

This is the first mention that we have of these fascinating little ‘toys and trinkets.’ They often bear inscriptions in a somewhat lame French, which we might have looked for rather on the rival wares of ‘Stratford-atte-Bowe’ than at a factory where we have reason to believe more than one Frenchman was employed. Of these toys a representative collection was made by Lady Charlotte Schreiber, and there are many charming specimens in the British Museum. We must remember that about this time, and perhaps earlier (1740-50), Saint-Cloud and, above all, Mennecy, were turning out a similar class of objects.

The Chelsea sale of 1756 is the earliest of which a catalogue has been preserved, and in it we find the first mention of the ‘mazareen’ blue, a colour after this time largely used as a ground for the more elaborate vases, both at Chelsea and at other English factories. The rage for porcelain was then at its height, and we see traces of this in the advertisements of the time; but in 1757 Sprimont fell ill, and little was made at Chelsea. In 1759 the collection of Chelsea porcelain made by the already-mentioned Sir Everard Fawkner, lately deceased, was sold by auction. The sale occupied several days, and in the advertisement we come across the earliest reference to the use of green en camaïeu—‘a tea and coffee equipage, exquisitely painted in green landscapes.’

It was about this time, Professor Church thinks, that the artificial frit-paste was replaced at Chelsea by one containing a large quantity of bone-ash (as much as fifty per cent. in some cases). The earlier material of the French type must have been very difficult to work, and it softened so readily in the kiln that many specimens were spoiled in the firing. It had, however, a certain mellow charm given by its translucency and by the close unison of paste and glaze, that was never equalled in the later material.

Indeed the high-water mark of the Chelsea factory was reached in the years that succeeded Sprimont’s first illness of 1757. It was then that the use of gilding became more general.221 The gold was laid on by means of an amalgam, the mercury being expelled by the heat of the muffle. The result, after burnishing, was to give a brilliant surface of pure gold unlike the solid chiselled lines and bands of dullish surface seen on Sèvres china. But from an artistic point of view this result is not very satisfactory—indeed, nothing has helped more to give a certain garish and vulgar air to much of the English porcelain made at this time.

In the notice of the spring sale of 1760, Sprimont sings the praises of ‘a few pieces of some new colours that have been found this year at a very large expense, incredible labour and close application.’ Among these new colours we must probably reckon the beautiful claret or deep purplish crimson, the one colour of our English porcelain that has never been surpassed or even equalled on the Continent. It differs from the contemporary rose Pompadour not only by the greater intensity of its hue, but by being a transparent colour. This claret is, of course, derived from the purple of Cassius, and the peculiar tint is said to be due to the addition to the gold of a small amount of silver. Among the other colours introduced at this time was probably a blue made in imitation of the famous turquoise of Sèvres. This blue is very rare as a ground colour at Chelsea, and the tint is generally greenish and opaque. It is found at its best on a large vase in the British Museum with open-work cover and handles. In a diluted form the turquoise blue is often found as a wash upon the drapery of statuettes. The rose Pompadour of Sèvres was also imitated at a later date, but not very successfully.

This is the time of the more ambitious vases, with a monochrome ground generally of deep blue and reserved panels painted with pastoral or mythological subjects, or with fantastic ‘exotic’ birds and flowers. The painting, even in the finest examples, never attained the delicacy of the Sèvres prototype, and it is often lamentably inefficient, but at the same time this very rudeness of execution sometimes adds to the decorative effect of the ensemble. These vases are above all distinguished by the strangely contorted shapes that Sprimont so loved to give to the handles, covers, and feet. All these points are well illustrated in the vases (made in the years 1762 and 1763) that Dr. Garnier gave to the Foundling Hospital and to the British Museum. The painting on these specimens is particularly bad and heavy. The mythological subjects, in the style of Boucher, on the famous garniture with claret ground, now belonging to Lord Burton, show a greater delicacy—in execution at least. This exaggerated rococo treatment—in the extreme forms even the bilateral symmetry is abandoned—was doubtless suggested by the forms of the ormolu mountings (for handles and feet especially) then much in vogue.222

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