Porcelain

It was at this time, or a little later, that the process of ‘casting’ was introduced for these statuettes. This was a process of English origin, though it is now extensively used at Sèvres and elsewhere abroad. We have described the various modifications of this plan in a previous chapter (p. 25). In the case of these statuettes, the figure is first modelled in tough clay; the head and limbs are then cut off. A plaster-of-Paris mould is then made of each of the separate parts, a cream-like slip is poured into the mould and quickly poured out before all the water is absorbed, a layer of the paste remaining on the sides of the mould. This layer is detached when sufficiently dry; the pieces are then joined together by means of the same slip, and the outline of the figure sharpened with a modelling tool.234 Porcelain made by this casting process is not so dense as that made on the old system; its specific gravity is appreciably lower. The moulding or repairing knife may be, to some extent, replaced by the use of a brush, but a less sharp outline is obtained in this case. In the furnace these figures have to be supported by an elaborate scaffolding of props, and the shrinkage of the clay during the firing is another source of difficulty.

In the British Museum may be seen a garniture of vases, of a type very characteristic of the early Chelsea-Derby time. A pale turquoise ground is overlaid with white flowers in low relief. This is but a modification of the German schnee-ball decoration. Somewhat later the pâte tendre of Sèvres is evidently taken as a model, as in the cabaret which was given by Queen Charlotte to one of her maids of honour. This ‘equipage,’ to give it its English name, has also found its way into our national collection. It has the rare jonquil ground with a border of blue and gold.

For smaller objects, for cups, saucers, and plates, a simpler style of decoration is in favour. The wreaths of little blue flowers, forget-me-nots, and corn-flowers (the French barbeau), relieved with touches of green and gold, remind one of the similar ware made at Sèvres, and more especially at some of the smaller Parisian factories during the early years of Louis xvi.

The elaborately decorated ‘old Japan’ was much copied at Derby, but so unintelligently that the patterns degenerated into meaningless forms, known as ‘rock Japan,’ ‘witches Japan,’ and even ‘Grecian Japan’! This was the beginning of a barbarous style of decoration, in vogue in the Staffordshire potteries at a later time both for porcelain and earthenware, in which scattered members of the original scheme are jumbled together at the whim of the ignorant painter.235

The subsequent vicissitudes of the Derby factory may be traced in the marks in use at successive dates. The combined anchor and D was apparently employed at Chelsea as long as the factory existed, but at Derby a crown with jewelled bows was introduced in 1773 (Pl. e. 75), perhaps on the occasion of some velléité of royal patronage, although we have no definite evidence of anything of the kind.236

Somewhat later we find two batons crossed, with three dots in each angle (similar to the ‘billiard’ mark on some Dutch porcelain) inserted on Derby porcelain between the crown and the letter D (Pl. e. 74).

William Duesbury died in 1786. His son, the second William, shortly before his death in 1796, took into partnership Michael Kean, a miniature-painter, and now a K was combined with the D on the mark. In 1813 the factory was leased to Robert Bloor by the third William Duesbury, and after that time we hear no more of that family in connection with Derby. Bloor conducted the works on ‘business principles’ until his death in 1846. If for nothing else, his name should be remembered in connection with a wonderfully brilliant claret, or rouge d’or, that he succeeded in making. There is a vase with this ground in the Jermyn Street collection which has excited the admiration of foreign experts. Bloor used the old mark, in red, up to 1831 at least. Before that time, however, the crown had lost the jewels upon its bows. At this period china-clay and china-stone were more and more used, and the porcelain became harder and somewhat opaque. As a consequence of the higher melting, or rather softening, points of both body and glaze, the enamels lost something of their brilliancy and lustre.

The present porcelain factory at Derby cannot strictly be regarded as a direct descendant of the old works on the Nottingham Road, whose career came to an end after Bloor’s death in 1846.

Worcester.—We have seen how William Duesbury, an obscure and illiterate painter of china images from the Staffordshire potteries, had after the absorption of the factories of Chelsea and Bow (as well probably as that established by Littler in Duesbury’s own country) become a kind of china king.

There was one factory, however, skilfully managed and established on a firm financial basis which remained entirely independent of him. Of the origin of this factory—the Worcester China Works—we have, quite exceptionally, a full record. These works, we may add, are also exceptional in another respect—they have had a continuous history from the year of their foundation to the present day, that is to say for more than a century and a half. Mr. R. W. Binns has in his possession a copy of the articles of association ‘for carrying on the Worcester Tonquin manufacture.’237 They are dated January 4, 1751. The forty-five shares of £100 each were divided among fifteen original partners, of whom two claim to possess the secret, art, mystery, and process of making porcelain. These two were John Wall, doctor of medicine, and William Davis, apothecary. We have no record of the preliminary experiments said to have been made by these two men in a laboratory over the apothecary’s shop, nor do we know for how long these experiments had been carried on. Two workmen, however, who had already been employed by them for some time, were retained by the new company and well paid as an inducement to keep secret the process of manufacture. It was the apothecary Davis, probably, who brought the scientific knowledge, but Dr. Wall also, besides being a portrait-painter who had acquired some renown at Oxford and in his native town (he had made designs for painted glass among other things), was an energetic, practical man with some scientific pretensions; nor must we forget the two workmen, who probably had a good deal to say in the matter.

A site for the new factory was found in Warmstry House, a fine old mansion that had belonged to the Windsor family, situated some hundred yards to the north of the cathedral, and the kilns were erected in the grounds which sloped down to the river. The biscuit kiln and the glazing-kiln were enclosed in long roofed buildings apparently without conspicuous chimneys. Only the great kiln for the ‘segurs’ takes the conical shape that we associate with pottery-ovens.238 The pressing, modelling, and throwing galleries were established in the old house itself, where there was also a ‘secret room.’

The little that we know of the composition of the paste, or rather pastes, for there were two or more varieties used for the fine and common ware respectively, is derived from a paper (now in the possession of Mr. Binns) drawn up in 1764 by Richard Holdship, one of the original partners. In that year Holdship (he was an engraver who had been associated with the introduction of the transfer process) became bankrupt, and now entered the service of Duesbury and Heath at Derby. From this paper we learn that the ordinary paste used at Worcester contained about two-thirds of a glassy material (a mixture of flint-glass, crown-glass, and a specially prepared frit), and one-third of a soapy rock, that is to say of a steatite, from Cornwall. The composition of the glaze is interesting:—it contained, besides the usual constituents, 14 per cent. of ‘foreign china,’ 2½ per cent. of ‘tin-ashes,’ and 0·3 per cent. of smalt. We should add that on the whole the glaze of Worcester china is somewhat harder than that of other English soft-paste wares. Along with this recipe is ‘a process for making porcelain ware, without soapy rock or glass, in imitation of Nanquin, being an opaque body.’ This ‘Nanquin’ ware was made by mixing bone-ash with an equal weight of a very silicious frit: to the mixture 8 per cent. of Barnstaple clay and a small quantity of smalt were added.

We learn from other sources (e.g. Borlase’s History of Cornwall, 1758) that the agents of the Worcester company were busy searching for and purchasing steatite rock, especially at Mullion, in the Lizard district.239

Of the porcelain produced during the first sixteen years of the Worcester factory we know a little more than of that of the corresponding time at Derby. This was an eclectic period: the wares (and the marks also) of Chantilly, Meissen, and Chelsea were copied. It was the Oriental models, however, that were most in favour, especially the blue and white of China, small pieces of which were imitated with some success. For the enamelled ware, the brocaded Imari, our ‘old Japan,’ rather than the older Kakiyemon ware, served as a type. At this time, too, a strange attempt was made to copy the marks of the Chinese porcelain. We can trace, sometimes, the well-known characters of the Ming dynasty (‘great’ and ‘bright’) (Pl. e. 76). In other cases Arabic numerals are arranged so as roughly to resemble a Chinese character. The idea was probably taken from old Delft ware on which similar marks are found, as also occasionally on Bow and on some Salopian porcelain. Again, we find a degenerate seal character, perhaps derived from the popular Japanese mark Fu (happiness), taking a form something like the design of a Union Jack (Pl. e. 78). The decoration of the Chinese famille rouge was also copied—we find it, for example, on the edges of little white cups and bowls with basket-work designs in low relief, of which there are some specimens at South Kensington.

To an early period, also, belongs the ware decorated in black (or less often in lilac), with figures and landscapes, ‘transferred’ by a variety of ingenious processes, which we need not describe here, from an engraved copper-plate. Used before this time on enamels at Battersea and on earthenware at Liverpool, it was with the ‘jet enamelled’ ware of Worcester, printed from the plates specially made for the purpose by Robert Hancock (who had previously been employed at Battersea under the Frenchman Ravenet), that the new process was above all associated. Here, for the first time perhaps in its history, porcelain was ‘made to speak,’ to use Napoleon’s phrase. On it the hero of the day was immortalised: in 1757 we find Frederick the Great, crowned by a winged Genius; at a later time the Marquis of Granby and the elder Pitt. It is Hancock, it would seem, that we must regard as the capo scuola of another ‘school of decoration,’ one which, spreading at a later time to Staffordshire, has been carried to all parts of the world where transfer-printed English crockery has penetrated. The basis of this decoration is a classical ruin—generally a fragment of the entablature of a Roman temple supported on a few columns; add to this a pointed building something between an obelisk and a pyramid,240 the whole enclosed in a framework of conventional trees. Upon how many millions of jugs and basins was this pattern repeated, in black, in green, and in lilac! At some future day, by the study of potsherds so decorated collected in many lands, an archæologist may be able to trace the course of English commerce in the nineteenth century, and to draw strange inferences as to the state of the arts at that time in our country.

This ‘jet-enamelled’ transfer was printed over the glaze; sometimes, to enliven the effect, other colours, painted by hand, were added, with disastrous results. In the blue and white printed ware, on the other hand, the cobalt pigment is applied under the glaze. The paste of this transfer-printed porcelain is often of good quality and very translucent, and the finer earlier specimens are much sought after by collectors. We have seen that at least from the cultur-historisch point of view this printed china is not without interest.

After 1763 Sprimont’s factory at Chelsea was only working at irregular intervals. Some time later, about 1768, many of the enamel-painters migrated to Worcester, where capable artists seem to have been in great demand. It is usual to attribute to this migration a new scheme of decoration that came into vogue at Worcester in the seventies. This was the period of the vases with deep blue grounds and panels brilliantly painted with flowers and bright-plumaged tropical birds. The bleu du roi ground (we must remember that, like the similar grounds at Chelsea and Longport, this pigment was painted sous couverte) is often covered with the salmon-scales in a deeper tint so characteristic of the period; at other times it is replaced by a poudré blue. The hand of the Chelsea artist is to be recognised in the decoration of the panels, but the vases are generally of simple contours, often octagonal and, on the whole, following Chinese shapes. It is this richly decorated ware, produced especially between 1770 and 1780, which now commands such extravagant prices in the London market.

On the other hand, the new classical forms already in favour at Derby and in France were not as yet adopted at Worcester—they came in later, and then in a more debased form. In fact, the special mark of this, the finest period in these works, is the application of a rich style of painting that we generally associate with rococo shapes, to vases which otherwise retain the form and decoration of their Chinese prototypes. Somewhat later, from Sèvres, no doubt, came the canary yellow, generally poor in tone and of uneven strength. The simple floral wreaths of the Louis xvi. period are here represented by the pretty ‘trellis’ design, green festoons hanging from reddish poles (Pl. xlvi.).

Much of the Worcester porcelain was from an early time decorated in London. In 1768 we find Mr. J. Giles (no doubt the ‘Mr. Gyles of Kentish Town’ to whose kiln Thomas Craft took his famous punch-bowl to be ‘burnt’ at a charge of 3s.) described in an advertisement as ‘china and enamel painter, proprietor of the Worcester Porcelain Warehouse, up one pair of stairs in Cockspur Street.’ Here the nobility and gentry may find ‘articles useful and ornamental curiously painted in the Dresden, Chelsea, and Chinese taste.’

At a later time the Baxter family occupied much the same position as Giles. The elder Baxter had workshops at Goldsmith Street, Gough Square,241 and here white porcelain from many sources was decorated. There is a curious water-colour drawing, representing the interior of this workshop, at South Kensington. It is the work of the younger Baxter, famous in his day as a painter on porcelain. The pale, anæmic faces of the artists—one of them wears a large pair of spectacles—crouching over their work in a narrow, crowded room, may be taken as evidence that this occupation was injurious both to the eyesight and to the general health (Pl. xlvii.).

PLATE XLVI. WORCESTER

To return to the general history of the Worcester factory. In 1770 we hear of a strike among the painters, who were alarmed at the spread of the underglaze printing process. The movement was not unconnected, probably, with the introduction of new blood from Chelsea. In 1772 there was a general shuffling-up and reorganisation of the company, with the result that Dr. Wall and the two Davises, father and son, finally gained possession of nearly all the shares. But the doctor died in 1776, and seven years later the whole concern was sold to Mr. Flight, a London jeweller, who had previously acted as agent for the company. At the same time Chamberlain, an original apprentice, and a man who had taken a leading part of late in the artistic management, seceded from the company, and, with his son, set up an independent manufactory.

After the visit of George iii. to the works in 1788, the factory became ‘Royal,’ and this is, perhaps, the nearest approach to a royal patronage that we can find in the history of English porcelain. In time the Chamberlain offshoot came to flourish more than the original stock, and finally, in 1840, the older firm, then known as ‘Flight and Barr,’ was absorbed by it. Towards the end of the eighteenth century many magnificent services of china were made for the royal family, painted with finished pictures in the style admired at the time. The porcelain was again ‘made to speak.’ In answer to the Napoleonic victories figured on the ware of Sèvres, we in England painted naval emblems and portraits of Lord Nelson on our plates and dishes.

The joint-stock company which now owns the Worcester factory was founded in 1862. Since that time great efforts have been made to keep on a level with the artistic movements of the day. Much attention has been paid to the modelling of the handles, the stands and the covers of the vases, so that some of them are works of art by themselves. The porcelain has been designed and decorated in ‘the style of the Italian renaissance,’ in the ‘French style,’ then for a time a Japanese influence prevailed, to be followed by vases in ‘Persian style,’ and then back to the ‘Florentine renaissance’ once more. But running through the whole, we may perhaps trace a soupçon of the French art of the later nineteenth century.

Apart from the imitative marks of the early period which we have already mentioned, we find at an early date the letter W, either for Wall or Worcester (so the D of the rival works may stand either for Derby or Duesbury). Another early mark, borrowed probably from Frye and the Bow works, is the T. F. monogram which occurs on some underglaze blue and white pieces. The crescent (Pl. e. 77), used up to 1793, is chiefly found on ware decorated with transfer printing: when this printing is in blue under the glaze, a solid or ruled crescent is found. The later firms, as ‘Flight and Barr’ and ‘Chamberlain,’ print their names in full. A number of small marks found on Worcester china—more than seventy have been noted—were added in most cases to identify the painters and gilders.

Smaller West of England Soft-Paste Factories.

This will be the most convenient place to say something of a small group of factories where china was made towards the end of the eighteenth century. It is a distinctly West of England family, owing its origin in a measure to Worcester, but also forming a link between that factory and the Staffordshire works. We include in it the Shropshire porcelains of Caughley and Coalbrookdale, together with Swansea and Nantgarw.

Caughley.—The ‘Salopian Porcelain Works’ were started in 1772 at Caughley, near Broseley, in Shropshire, a neighbourhood long famous for its earthenware. It was here that Thomas Turner, a man of some social standing who came from Worcester, devoted himself more especially to printing in blue under the glaze. It was at Caughley, it would seem, about 1780, that the famous ‘willow pattern’ was first used. There is in the British Museum a curious little oblong dish that shows this design in an undeveloped form. Turner, it is said, first printed complete dinner-services, in dark blue, with this pattern. Not long after this he went to France, and brought back a batch of French painters, whose influence may perhaps be seen in the ware made at a later time at Coalport. Some of the printed work is delicately executed, and when the decoration is judiciously heightened with a little gilding, the effect is not unpleasing. We hear also of dinner-services painted with ‘Chantille sprigs,’ and Turner also supplied Chamberlain with plain white ware to be subsequently decorated at Worcester. At a later time much gilding was applied to a richly decorated porcelain. Some of this ware is stamped with the word ‘Salopian,’ other pieces have the letters S or C printed or painted under the glaze; but both Dresden and even Worcester marks were also used. Two men, at a later time representatives of the industrial phase of porcelain, John Rose and Thomas Minton, were trained in these short-lived works.

Coalport or Coalbrookdale.—Here, on the left bank of the Severn, nearly opposite the last-named factory, John Rose began making porcelain soon after 1780. In 1799 he purchased from Turner (whose apprentice he had been) the Caughley works, and in 1814 he removed the whole plant to Coalbrookdale. Here, too, came Billingsley after the closing of the Nantgarw works, and here he worked till his death in 1828. During the first half of the nineteenth century the firm of John Rose and Company was a successful rival to the Davenports, Mintons, and Copelands. Rose excelled in the production of gorgeous vases decorated with picture panels, and Billingsley kept up the supply of his English roses. The older wares of Sèvres and Chelsea were copied not unsuccessfully, and the appropriate mark was not omitted. The firm seems to have above all prided itself upon the beauty of its rose Pompadour grounds, and at a later time, after 1850, both this ground and the turquoise blue were largely applied to the pseudo-Sèvres porcelain that found its way to the London china-shops. In 1820 Rose was granted a medal by the Society of Arts for a leadless glaze, compounded of felspar and borax. The factory at Coalport continues to produce much china on the same lines.

Near at hand, at Madeley, some very close imitations of the old Sèvres were made by Randall between 1830 and 1840. For the origin of this English Sèvres we must go back to the year 1813, when we hear of the agents of London dealers buying up white and slightly decorated Sèvres soft paste. Any enamel colour on them was removed by hydrofluoric acid, and the surface was richly decorated in the Pompadour style. Randall soon after this time was engaged with similar work in London: his turquoise blues are especially praised.

Plate XLVII

Water-colour Drawing. Enamel Painters at work.

Swansea and Nantgarw.—At the beginning of the nineteenth century some works at Swansea, where a so-called ‘opaque porcelain’ had been lately manufactured, were purchased by Mr. Lewis W. Dillwyn. Mr. Dillwyn was a keen naturalist: he induced Mr. Young, a draughtsman who had been employed by him in illustrating works on natural history, to learn the art of enamel-painting on porcelain. Young devoted himself to painting birds, shells, and above all butterflies. In spite of the aim at scientific accuracy, the artistic effect of these delicately painted butterflies, scattered here and there over the dead white paste, is not unpleasant. There were some good specimens of this form of decoration in the old Jermyn Street collection, but most of them, I think, are not painted on a true porcelain.

Meantime, at Nantgarw (Anglicè Nantgarrow), some ten miles north of Cardiff, a small porcelain factory had been established by one William Beely and his son-in-law, Samuel Walker.

Mr. Dillwyn, who visited the Nantgarw works in 1814, at the instigation of his friend Sir Joseph Banks, found these two men making an admirable soft-paste porcelain, remarkable for its translucency. ‘I agreed with them,’ so Mr. Dillwyn reported, ‘for a removal to the Cambrian pottery [i.e. to Swansea], where two new kilns were prepared under their direction. When endeavouring to improve and strengthen this beautiful body, I was surprised at receiving a notice from Messrs. Flight and Barr of Worcester, charging the parties calling themselves Walker and Beely with having clandestinely left an engagement at their works.’

Beely was in fact no other than Billingsley, the wandering artist and ‘arcanist’ who in 1774 was apprenticed to Duesbury at Derby, and had there learned the art of painting flowers on porcelain. We hear that in 1793 he was also landlord of the ‘Nottingham Arms,’ but in spite, or perhaps rather in consequence, of thus having two strings to his bow, he soon after left Derby, and for twenty years led a roving life. In 1796 he was at Pinxton, and it was here, says Mr. W. Turner (The Ceramics of Swansea and Nantgarw), whom I now follow, that he perfected his famous granulated frit body. Then follows an obscure period, during which we hear of Billingsley at Mansfield, and again as a china manufacturer at Torksey, in Lincolnshire. Finally, in 1808, he settled down to work at Worcester under the name of Beely. His later migrations to Nantgarw, to Swansea, and finally to Coalport, we have already referred to.