The Introduction of Porcelain Production in England - Part 1

By: blog.RubyLane.com

Undeniable obsession; the search for financial backers; bankruptcy; families with their possessions piled into handcarts, on foot to another town to escape creditors and try again; triumph and disaster: the story of the development of English porcelain in the first half of the 18th century.

The earliest concerns range from small hopeful flames that flickered briefly then died, extinguished by failure, constant disappointment, and lack of funds. Others burned bright for decades and some survived through various changes down the succeeding centuries, despite continual challenges and trials. Faced with the seemingly impregnable prospect of the fortress that was the established market, not only for the imported Chinese porcelains but also from the Continent, such as those from Meissen, Chantilly, Sevres and Doccia, it is all the more remarkable that the development of a home-grown porcelain trade was ever contemplated.

An all-consuming obsession must surely be ascribed to them, for commercial acumen and confident vision of ultimate success alone would have been unable to guarantee a potential market for the proposed English production, unknown and unpredictable as it was in the prevailing circumstances.

Discovered by the Chinese hundreds of years before, the secret of making the highly prized and coveted true hard paste ceramic body did not arrive in Europe until the early years of the 18th C. After many lengthy trials and much personal suffering, the formula was successfully recreated by Johann Bottger at Dresden C1710, (a struggle vividly and entertainingly recounted in the 'The Arcanum' by Janet Gleeson), which eventually formed the foundation of the famous Meissen factory. Bottger's discovery in Kolditz of a source of kaolin, a china clay in a form of decomposed granite, was the vital ingredient to the production of hard paste porcelain. The recipe was fiercely guarded but inevitably, its secrets spread out across mainland Europe.

While porcelain had been made in France from the 17thC, it was a soft paste or pâte tendre, but following the discovery of kaolin this changed to hard paste in 1769, which quickly prevailed across the continent. Hard paste, a mixture of kaolin and petunse, or china clay and china rock, fired to a temperature in excess of 1300 degrees centigrade, with the glaze usually in a single firing, results in a vitrified bright, glassy appearance, in which the enamels are fused into the body.

Apart from a brief experiment with hard paste at Plymouth and Bristol, early English porcelain is of soft paste, although the factories experimented with different recipes, using soaprock at Worcester and the addition of animal bone at Bow. New Hall developed a hybrid hard paste body that this was greyer in comparison with the white body of both soft and pure hard paste.

The first efforts, discounting a bare handful of late 17th century experimenters such as John Dwight in London, were undertaken and established in London at Chelsea, Limehouse, and Bow in the late 1740’s, but within a few short years the porcelains were being produced at factories across England. In cross section, the difference in the paste is apparent in what is traditionally described as an "icing sugar" appearance, whereas the soft paste shows a granular texture. The different firing temperatures and technique give a glaze that is softer and 'floaty' in appearance, but sunk slightly into the surface, resulting in pieces of enormous charm and quiet beauty.

The great continental factories were supported and even owned by royalty, easing the commercial pressures and rendering them immune from financial constraints, unlike the English concerns which were totally reliant on private enterprise and commercial success in order to survive in a highly precarious and capricious market.

The influences of the East India Company’s imported blue and white Chinese tea wares, and the decorative styles from Meissen and Sevres, are clearly apparent in the first English porcelains. Of them all, perhaps the Worcester factory was the most successful in absorbing, adapting and drawing inspiration from the ceramic and silverware shapes and decorative influences of the time, becoming one of the most innovative and successful survivors from the early period. Chelsea was definite in its market focus and its porcelains were an expensive luxury from the start, targeted deliberately at the wealthy and the gentry, in contrast to the Bow production, which sought its main niche as an alternative to the blue and white Chinese tablewares.

Within a few years of those first factories, others began porcelain production in the London area, including at Vauxhall and Isleworth. Production rapidly spread out across the country to Plymouth and Bristol in the South-West, the Staffordshire area, further north and east to Newcastle, Liverpool, Lowestoft and up into Scotland at West Pans, where William Littler tried his hand after the failure of the Longton Hall enterprise in Staffordshire. To this day, there are porcelain factories about which little is yet known, and much still remains to be discovered about the works at Greenwich, Shelton and Wirksworth.

Late-comers they certainly were, yet the notable quality and sophistication of the porcelains, and the original decoration which evolved in the 18thC English wares, stands comfortably in favorable comparison with those from the great German, Austrian and French factories.

The ongoing hardship and financial struggle, experienced by both the owners and their employees, litters the history of the 18thC and 19th century English factories - an ironic contrast to the often-vertiginous prices realised in today’s market for these wares.

Bone china was the great English invention of Josiah Spode C1800. Containing a proportion of kaolin, the extra ingredient was the addition of animal bone, producing a ceramic of high translucency, whiteness, and strength. Eventually all the English factories changed to the standard bone china mix which is still being made by famous producers such as at Royal Worcester, Coalport and Royal Crown Derby.

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