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…)

Beautiful vessels and plates of porcellana, large and small . . . for one Venetian groat you could actually have three bowls so beautiful that no one would know how to devise them better. . . .’ So wrote the young Venetian Marco Polo about the yingqing (`misty blue‘) porcelain he saw on his journeys through China in about 1271-5.

Until this time, China was virtually unknown to Europeans except as `Seres’, the land of silk, although as early as the Tang dynasty of AD 618-906, jewels, horses, medicines, wild animals and literature were flowing into the country from India, Arabia and Japan. (more…)

During the 18th century, a continuous stream of porcelain dinner services arrived from China while others were manufactured in Europe. They originally copied shapes that had been made in contemporary European pewter or silver.

Chinese Export Porcelain

At first, Chinese porcelain was unrivalled as it was both fashionable and cheap. Throughout the 18th century, services by the ton packed the holds of the East India companies’ ships. Many were meticulously painted to order with the armorials of aristocratic British families in `famille-rose’ enamels, but sometimes amusing mistakes occurred — as when a family motto ‘Unite’ appeared on hundreds of pieces as ‘Untie’. A service such as this, or with unusual associations, will fetch far more than ordinary services. Other designs included delicately painted Chinese flowers, birds and family scenes, and an exotic pattern of overlapping coloured leaves known as the `Tobacco Leaf’ design. (more…)

Embroidered pictures, samplers and everyday objects survive from as early as the 16th century, when Mary, Queen of Scots was a noted needlewoman.

Although Elizabethan needlework is rare today, a surprising number of early pieces dating from the 17th century onwards have survived. They include both so-called needle paintings, which present a picture in the form of embroidery, and also decorative household items such as bed- hangings, fire screens and cushions. (more…)

Britain Swings ahead

In the mass market London led by the 196os. Newspaper colour supplements, introduced in 1962, helped to spread awareness of contemporary design. ‘Swinging Sixties’ people — whose taste in clothes included shift dresses, miniskirts and flared trousers — admired furnishings with a compact look spiced with novelty. British manufacturers were generally keen to explore plastics, glass fibre, fibreboard, PVC, smoked glass and spun aluminium. Robin Day’s moulded polypropylene stacking chair on a steel-rod base was first seen in 1963 and still has not dated. (more…)

Fashionable rooms now had their wooden floors carpeted, often wall to wall. Draperies were lavish, with fabric not just festooned across rods above the windows and hanging as curtains crossing over at the centre, but sometimes covering the walls as well. Other wall treatments included wallpaper and painted decorative effects such as marbling, graining and stencilling. Walls, furniture coverings and curtains might have the same pattern, frequently of flowers or of country scenes, sometimes of stripes (evoked by the military mood). Pale colours, with yellows and lime-greens among the most popular, gave rooms an airy look. (more…)

Although hand skills continued, science and technology were advancing on all fronts. Pottery and porcelain were soon to prove a field for industrialisation. While British factories could not yet match Meissen and Sevres, attractive and popular pieces were made. Highly decorated soft-paste porcelain figures were still made by Chelsea (for tables, mantelshelves and cabinets), now with coloured and gilded scrolls instead of the earlier mounds forming the base. Tiny figures known as ‘toys’ were made to hold scent, needles and bonbons. Earthenware figures and Toby jugs were made in the Staffordshire potteries to appeal to a mass market. (more…)

Willing to accept the newly rich as well as new designs, the gentry in early Georgian Britain swelled in numbers and indulged their spending urge — often to excess. This led many to ruin, but it also allowed craftsmen, designers and artists to make great reputations for themselves.

Merit, good fortune, education and patronage, corruption and service to the nation were among the varied means of advancement in mid- 1 8th century Britain. (more…)

When the monarchy was restored in Britain in 166o, and Charles II became king, he and his courtiers brought back a desire for the luxurious style of life they had briefly shared during their exile in the royal households of Europe, especially at the French court. Released from the pious austerity of the Commonwealth, Britain’s upper classes indulged in lavish comforts in the home, sensuous clothing, enjoyment ofthe arts, and robust entertainments at the theatre, at horseraces and at the gaming table.

With parliament and monarch in accord, a standing army established to back up their authority, and new banking, investment and insurance organisations growing to fund commerce, the nation prospered. Overseas trade grew and London was rapidly becoming the greatest port in the world, bringing in spices, tea, coffee, chocolate, pineapples, Oriental porcelain and lacquerwork, cane, tortoiseshell, ivory, rugs and Indian chintzes. (more…)

Soft Touches

Carpets on the floor and curtains at the windows were rare through Elizabethan and Jacobean times — but carpeting and curtaining were profusely used for other purposes. Fine woollen fabrics, or silks and velvets from China and Italy were hung around the bed, while cushions and table coverings were often of harder-wearing turkeywork — wool knotted into a backing like Turkish rugs.

Many soft furnishings were made by the ladies of the house who worked pillowcases and bed coverlets, cushions and book covers, purses and bodices. Trellises set with flowers and animals wound across their fabrics. The needlewomen could use pattern books of motifs, pricking along the lines, then pressing powder through the holes onto the fabric. (more…)