Mass Production

During the last quarter of the 18th century the centre of the British porcelain industry was in the heartlands of the Staffordshire potteries. The New Hall factory of Shelton was just one of those producing large numbers of tea and coffee services for the rising urban middle classes in hard-paste porcelain, copying the clean shapes of late Georgian silver. Typical helmet-shaped cream jugs (£60-£100) and oval teapots decorated with small gilt or monochrome floral sprigs (£200-£500) can be identified by their pattern number. (more…)

During the later Georgian period, it became fashionable to finish a meal with a dessert course — consisting of pies, ices, tarts, fruits, nuts, syllabubs and custards — in place of the earlier ‘banquets’ of spiced sweetmeats and biscuits. Dessert was laid out at a separate table or on a three-tier dumb waiter.

Dessert wares were part of Chinese export dinner services from the 1760s onwards, and included sauce tureens and covers, pierced baskets, low, circular, oval or boat-shaped fruit stands (or tazzas) and dessert plates, which are a little smaller than dinner plates. But since dessert was served^-cold, wares did not need to be heat-resistant to be suitable, and as a result, British soft-paste porcelain was able to compete with imported Chinese and continental dessert services. (more…)

Two mid-Victorian fashions rejected the smothering cosiness. One was inspired by France, where nostalgia for the furniture of Louis XVI had produced a mishmash of pre-Revolutionary styles with a sprinkling of the brass or ormolu used in the Empire style.

In Britain this vogue was imitated, and rooms decorated with white and gold paper held delicate French-style furniture decked with veneers and marquetry of woods such as satinwood, amboyna and purpleheart. Pottery manufacturers, notably Minton and Coalport, produced close copies of Sèvres, while the Worcester Royal Porcelain Company produced high-quality ‘Limoges ware’. (more…)

Dinner consisted of a soup, fish, fricassee of chicken, cutlets, veal, hare, vegetables of all kinds, tart, melon, pineapple, grapes, peaches, nectarines with wine in proportion. Six servants wait upon us, a gentleman-inwaiting and a fat old housekeeper hovering round the door. Four hours later the door opens and in is pushed a supper of the same proportions.’ So the Countess of Granville recorded in 18 o a meal served just to her husband and herself. Food and drink were central to luxurious living and the wealthy offered guests dozens of dishes at dinner. (more…)

Let us suppose that you love the old porcelains and chinas of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and you want to get together, as inexpensively as possible, specimens of every kind. You want to be able, whenever you please, to see, feel and compare pieces from Caughley and Coalport, Worcester and Derby, China and Dresden, Mintons and Rockingham. In other words, hard up as you are you want to become a connoisseur of old china.

Surprising though it may seem, there’s a way of doing it, and it will cost you shillings rather than pounds. (more…)

In the greatest possible contrast to all this white and cream-coloured wares come teapots in the austerest black –but all the same with decorative possibilities for those with an eye for contrasts. There are those in black basaltes, an unglazed sort of stoneware originally developed by Josiah Wedgwood. It is stained black all through and usually has only moulded decoration, but there are some types with red encaustic colours. The shapes are pretty well the same as in jasper ware. Then there are the so-called “Jackfield” pots, which are actually on red earthenware, but covered by a shiny black glaze sometimes with gilded decoration—though this is often quite worn off from years of washing. The early Jackfield ware has a browny tinge, but the trade also uses this name for black-glazed Victoria wares which sprout all over with coloured pads of flower and curlicues. (more…)