and Bristol are mainly noteworthy because they were the only English factories in which a true porcelain strictly analogous to the Chinese was ever manufactured. William Cookworthy, a Quaker druggist of Plymouth, was greatly interested in attempting to discover in Cornwall and Devonshire minerals similar to those which were described in the letters of Père d’Entrecolles as forming the basis of Chinese porcelain. After many years of travel and research he ascertained the nature of the Cornish stone and Cornish clay, and in 1768 he founded a works at Plymouth for the production of a porcelain similar to the Chinese from these native materials. Readers interested in this abortive enterprise, from which such great results were afterwards to come, can only be referred to the general histories of English porcelain, for the factory was removed to Bristol in 1770 and was shortly afterwards transferred to Richard Champion, a Bristol merchant, who had already been dabbling in the fashionable pursuit of porcelain making. Champion’s Bristol factory lasted from 1773 to 1781, when the business had to be sold to a number of Staffordshire potters owing to the serious losses it had entailed. The Bristol porcelain, like that of Plymouth, was always a true felspathic porcelain resembling the Chinese, but made from the china clay and china stone of Cornwall. It is, therefore, harder and whiter than the other English porcelains, and its cold, harsh, glittering glaze marks it off at once from the wares of Bow, Chelsea, Worcester or Derby.
The Bristol porcelain resembled that of Meissen quite as much in its style of decoration as in the nature of its materials. One can point to nothing distinctly English about it, and if specimens now command very high prices in the salerooms it is on account of their rarity rather than of any intrinsic quality or beauty that they possess.
Table ware of various kinds formed the greater part of the production of the Bristol works, but a considerable number of figures are known, in many cases obviously copied from those of Meissen, and a few large hexagonal vases similar in style to specimens produced at Chelsea and at Worcester. The most distinctive pieces made at the Bristol factory are certain small plaques or slabs in “biscuit” porcelain, usually bearing in the centre a portrait medallion or armorial bearings surrounded by a wreath of skilfully modelled flowers. Good examples of these choice productions are to be seen in the British Museum.
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| Plymouth, Bristol, Champion and Swansea marks. |
The Plymouth factory is supposed to have adopted as its general mark the alchemical symbol for tin. This mark was also used to a limited extent at the Bristol factory, though the general Bristol mark was a cross or a copy of the crossed swords of Meissen. The Staffordshire potters who bought the rights of the Bristol porcelain factory from Champion established a works at Shelton, near Stoke-upon-Trent, in Staffordshire, under the name of New Hall Porcelain Co., but they never manufactured anything of artistic account.
Minor English Factories.—A number of other porcelain factories were founded in England in the latter half of the 18th century, but none of these produced ware of any particular merit. The porcelain made at Longton Hall by William Littler (1752–1758), always clumsy and ugly in form, is interesting for a splendid blue colour characteristic of the factory. This small venture was ultimately absorbed by William Duesbury.
The colony of potters established in Liverpool also made a certain amount of porcelain, as well as “Delft” and other earthenwares, and the Liverpool Museum contains some good examples of their productions.
A little factory at work at Lowestoft in the last quarter of the 18th century has attracted much more attention than it deserves, because certain writers foolishly attributed to it large quantities of “Armorial” porcelain which had, undoubtedly, been made in China. Recent excavations have established the fact that this factory was only of minor importance, and was mainly occupied in producing cheap wares in rivalry with, and even in imitation of, those of the more important English factories.
Towards the end of the 18th century the manufacture of English porcelain spread into the Staffordshire potteries, and the firms of Spode, Davenport and Minton became the most important English factories of the early 18th century. For notices of the minor English factories of the late 18th century and early 19th century, such as Caughley, Coalport, Swansea and Nantgarw, the student is referred to the special works dealing with the history of English porcelain.
Collections.—The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum contain the best general collections of English porcelain. The museums at Bristol and Liverpool contain examples of the local wares; while the museum at the Worcester Royal Porcelain works has an admirable collection of the wares of that factory. Many noteworthy private collections are in existence, of which we may mention those of Mr Dyson Perrins, Mr Cockshutt and Mr Trapnell.
Literature.—Alex. Brongniart, Traitié des arts céramiques (1844); Jacquemart, Histoire de la céramique (Eng. ed. 1873); Jännicke, Grundriss der Keramik (1879); Dr Brinkmann, Handbook of European Porcelains in the Hamburg Museum; Marryat, History of Pottery and Porcelain (1857); Jewitt, Ceramic Art of Great Britain (1878); Auscher, A History and Description of French Porcelain (1905); Burton, A History and Description of English Porcelain (1902); Dillon, Porcelain (1904); Solon, Old English Porcelain (1903); Burton, Porcelain (1906); R. Almstrom, Lervarorna och deras Tillverkning (1903). (W. B.*)
Pottery and Porcelain during the 19th Century
The development of the manufacture of pottery and porcelain in Europe and America throughout the 19th century need not be treated in such detail as the history of its growth up to that period, for modern means of communication and the general diffusion of knowledge have tended to destroy the individual character which was so marked a feature of the pottery of different countries in previous centuries. The 19th century was distinctly the century of machinery, and, for the most part, it witnessed the displacement by mechanical processes of those methods of handicraft which made the older pottery individual and interesting even in its simplest forms. Collectors are prepared to pay very large sums for choice examples of the potter’s art of bygone centuries, but it is doubtful if much of the pottery of the 19th century will ever be collected for its intrinsic merits, though it may be preserved as an illustration of the spirit of the age.
In preceding sections of this article the development of the brightly painted tin-enamelled wares and the gaily decorated porcelains of various European countries have been traced down to the end of the 18th century, because that date marks, quite distinctly, the period when the old handicraft of the potter was for various reasons displaced by organized manufacture. The disturbed economic condition of Europe in the last quarter of the 18th century and the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century proved disastrous to most of the pottery and porcelain works where artistic wares were made, and the disturbance of traditional methods was completed by the superior mechanical perfection and cheapness of the English earthenware introduced by Wedgwood and his contemporaries. The English pottery was neater, more perfectly finished and more durable than the painted tin-enamelled pottery of the continent. It vied in finish with the expensive continental porcelains, and for nearly half a century it carried all before it, not only in England, but throughout the world. An intelligent observer, M. Faujas de Saint Fond, writing in the beginning of the 19th century, remarks of English pottery that “Its excellent workmanship, its solidity, the advantage which it possesses of sustaining the action of fire, its fine glaze impenetrable to acids, the beauty and convenience of its form, and the cheapness of its price, have given rise to a commerce so active and so universal, that in travelling from Paris to Petersburg, from Amsterdam to the farthest parts of Sweden, and from Dunkirk to the extremity of the south of France one is served at every inn upon English ware. Spain, Portugal and Italy are supplied with it; and vessels are loaded with it for the East Indies, the West Indies, and the continent of America.”[1] It was calculated that at this time three-fourths of the pottery manufactured in England was sent abroad. Such a state of things was not likely to continue, and in most of the European countries, after the settlement of 1815, such of the older factories as had survived, or new factories specially created for the purpose, adopted English methods of manufacture. In many cases
- ↑ Travels in England and Scotland (Eng. trans.), vol. i. p. 97.
