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…)

Although the finest complete services are out of reach for most collectors, it is possible to find beautiful single pieces such as teabowls, coffee cups and saucers, teapots, jugs and chocolate beakers at reasonable prices.

Tea, coffee, and chocolate have been firm favourites with the British ever since a ‘drink called by the Chineans tcha’ was introduced in the 1630s, the first coffee house was opened in London in 1650, and chocolate was first advertised for sale as a drink in 1657. The three beverages were to have a profound influence on the ceramics industries of Britain and the rest of Europe. The high cost of tea when it first arrived in Europe was responsible for keeping early wares small, so that such a luxury item would not be wasted. (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…)

Japanese Wares

Very little Japanese blue and white porcelain was imported into Europe; the few imports were copies of kraak dishes. These can be distinguished from their Chinese counterparts by heavier potting, the finely bubbled glaze and the presence of `spur’ marks on the base. They fetch £1500-£5000 - more than the Chinese originals. Small dishes, teabowls and saucers made for the Dutch market, and influenced by Delft ware, fetch £300-£ 1 000. (more…)

Unexpected finds of early Chinese porcelain do still occur — when a lamp base, for example, or a dog’s bowl turns out to be a valuable early Ming piece. But there is also plenty of later blue and white to attract the collector.

The origins of underglaze-blue decoration are debatable, but certainly it was in use in China by the second quarter of the 14th century. Cobalt oxide, a black pigment which turns blue on firing, had been imported from Persia in Tang times (AD 618-906) and used to colour glazes. But it was the idea of painting it onto a white porcelain body before glazing and final firing that produced the blue and white style of decoration that is still in wide use today. (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…)

In Britain

Very few earthenware figures were produced in Britain - or elsewhere in Europe - before about 1700, but early to mid- 18th-century white, salt-glazed stoneware pieces are now among the most sought-after items of ceramic art. Some are freestanding and single, while others are grouped on a pew. Pew-groups in good condition rarely fetch less than £60, 000. (more…)

On the Continent

It was probably Buddhist figures such as these that inspired the earliest European porcelain figures — `magots’ or models of humorous little Chinese Buddhas produced on the Continent — at Meissen, Saint-Cloud, Chantilly and Mennecy — from the 1720s to 40s, and in Britain from about 1780.

The Meissen Contribution

The European porcelain figure as we know it today, however, developed not from burial goods or religious models but as centrepieces for the banqueting tables of the aristocracy. (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…)

Pottery and porcelain could be decorated before or after glazing, or the glaze itself might form the decoration — as, for example, with the splashed greens, yellows and browns of English Astbury-Whieldon pottery of the 18th century. Three-dimensional, relief or incised designs were always done before applying the glaze, while coloured designs could be added to the piece before glazing ( in the case of underglaze colours) or after (overglaze colours, or enamels, and gilding). (more…)