Antique 19th Century Porcelain
XIX Century European, American and Japanese Porcelain
During the early decades of the 19th century, the entire porcelain of Europe was dominated by the prolific output of British porcelain, porcelain and bone-china.
John Rose, who had established a factory mainly devoted to the manufacture of porcelain at Coalport, Shropshire, in about 1797, was to flourish and in turn absorb the concerns of neighbouring Caughley (1799) and later two Welsh factories, Nantgarw and Swansea (c.1820). Coalport is now part of the Wedgwood Group and is still in operation in Staffordshire.
There is still a little confusion concerning the wares made at Caughley by Thomas Turner between 1796-99 and those made by John Rose, who after his purchase continued in production until about 1815, when he transferred the entire manufacture to Coalport. Further difficulties also arise because quite a lot of Turner’s Caughley wares were decorated independently by Robert Chamberlain at Worcester. Also, in the early 19th century John Rose was supplying the London decorator Thomas Baxter with ‘Coalport White China’. Therefore, attribution is usually best verified by form rather than decoration.
Most early Coalport porcelain is unmarked, but pattern numbers can be a useful guide. Progressive numbers 1-1,000 were used from about 1805-24, after which fractions were used. This resulted in 2/1-2/999 being applied to wares made between 1824-38, reaching as high as 8/18/1000. The later numbers are usually accompanied with a recorded and datable factory-mark. During the middle of the 19th century Coalport produced some fine quality reproductions of Sevres porcelain, sometimes complete with mark !
It had long been the ambition of the painter William Billingsley to produce a fine porcelain. He left Derby in 1796 to establish a factory at nearby Pinxton, financed by John Coke. The limited production consisted primarily of tablewares, very much in the same styles as those of Derby. Sometimes they were decorated with pleasing landscapes by Billingsley himself, in the manner of Zachariah Boreman of Derby. Due to lack of expected profits, Billingsley moved on in 1799 to become an independent decorator, but Pinxton continued in a modest way until 1813. Pinxton used some distinctive handles on their vessels and cups, which are a useful identification aid to the collector.
Having found a new financial backer, Billingsley started to produce a 19th-century ‘Etruria’ teapot produced by Wedgwood.
beautiful, but costly, soft-paste porcelain at Nantgarw, near Cardiff in South Wales, in 1814. However, within the same year he was compelled to transfer the manufacture to the Swansea porcelain of L. W. Dillwyn. There, Billingsley and his son-in-law, Samuel Walker, were forced to make a more stable porcelain, with a so-called ‘duck-egg’ translucency. In 1817 they returned to Nantgarw to restart their original factory. Stylistically, the early wares of Billingsley had much in common with French porcelain of the Empire Period, but a large amount of Nantgarw porcelain was ruined by the over ornate decoration added in London by the decorators employed by the china dealers Mortlocks of Oxford Street.
Josiah Spode was born in 1733 and at the age of 16 years he was apprenticed to Thomas Whieldon. In 1770 he was sufficiently experienced to take over the porcelain of William Banks, for whom he had previously worked. He became a Master Potter, establishing a major porcelain factory, which has flourished to the present day. The son, Josiah Spode II, first produced bone-china in about 1800, taking William Copeland into partnership in 1805. William Spode, the grandson of the founder, died in 1829, and in 1833 William Taylor Copeland and Thomas Garrett became joint proprietors until 1847. From that time the company has been associated with the Copeland family, although now part of the Carborundum group of companies.
The name of Spode is probably best known among collectors for the large production of earthenware decorated with underglaze-blue transfer prints, often illustrating subjects taken from published engravings. Josiah Spode II used fine bone-china to produce a wide range of tea and dessert services and many good quality decorative wares. He managed to survive trading difficulties resulting from the Napoleonic Wars better than many of his rivals. It has been suggested that Spode’s stone-china was being made as early as 1805, after he had acquired the patent from W. & J. Turner, but factory records indicate the material was not introduced until about 1813.
A further important name in the field of 19th century English porcelain is that of Thomas Minton, born in Shrewsbury in 1765. Minton was first apprenticed to Thomas Turner at Caughley, to learn the art of engraving copper-plates for the making of transfer-prints. It is said that he was involved in the early version of the so-called ‘Willow’ pattern, as seen on Caughley. He later worked as an engraver in London and after marrying returned to Stoke where he engraved plates for other potters, including Spode.
Minton’s business flourished and in 1793, at the age of 28, he became a partner in a porcelain. By 1796 he had built his own factory, where he first appears to have concentrated on the manufacture of blue-printed earthenware, soon to be followed by cream-coloured earthenwares of the Wedgwood type and bone-china. By 1810 Thomas Minton was producing wares in almost the entire range of porcelain bodies being made in Staffordshire at that time, although the production of bone-china was halted between 1810-24.
Recently, identification of many of Minton’s unmarked wares made between 1810-24 has been made easier for the collector through the surviving pattern-books. These show not only the form, but a wide variety of original printed, painted and gilt designs, in addition to many patterns which would normally be associated with such contemporary potteries as Spode, Miles Mason, New Hall and Pinxton.
Many bone-china figures and ornamental wares previously considered to be the work of Coalport, Derby or Rockingham, have been confirmed by the pattern-books to have been made by Thomas Minton and his son Herbert, who was in control from 1836. Herbert Minton took John Boyle into partnership from 1836-42, after which he was joined by Daintry Hollins and Colin Minton Campbell in 1842 and 1849 respectively. Herbert Minton died in 1858, by which time the company had 1,500 employees. Today, Minton continues in production as part of the Royal Doulton Tableware Group.
A wide range of commonplace earthenware had been produced at Swinton, Yorkshire, from the mid-18th century, but the Rockingham factory is best known today for the fine porcelain made by the Brameld family from 1826. Many so-called Rockingham porcelains were beautiful. However, they were so expensively decorated that profits were small and despite financial aid from Earl Fitzwilliam closure became necessary in 1842.
For many years a large number of bone-china figures, tablewares and decorative pieces have been attributed to this factory, without the benefit of any evidence. But recent research has enabled present-day attributions to be more accurate. It has, for example, been proved beyond all reasonable doubt that Rockingham made no figures of small ’shaggy’ poodles or pastille-burners in the form of little cottages or other buildings. The adopted ‘griffin’ mark (in red enamel from 1826-30, and in puce from 1830-42), was not used consistently and sometimes is seen only on a single item of a service. The collector should note that any pattern number exceeding about 1570 definitely indicates the work of another factory making similar wares, such as Ridgways.
America
During the first half of the 19th century various types of earthenware were being produced by several potters in the Philadelphia and Trenton areas. These included some admirably printed wares of English type, made by the American porcelain Company of Jersey City. Jugs of ‘Parian’ type porcelain, with moulded relief decoration and patterns ‘pirated’ from the English manufacturers, were in great demand. They are known to have been made by the United States porcelain at Bennington, Vermont, and E. & W. Bennett of Baltimore, Maryland.
Also popular during the mid-19th century were vessels with a richdark-brown glaze, so called ‘Rockingham’, a fashion catered for by many American factories. The American ‘Rockingham’ glaze differs from that associated with the English factory at Swinton, Yorkshire, by having a thicker and mottled appearance. These American Rockingham wares had much in common with maiolica ware. This was popular both in America and England. Glazes coloured with high-temperature oxides were applied to wares moulded in relief. The colours usually included 19th century pinks and crimsons derived from chrome.
From about 1826 some very good quality hard-paste porcelain was made in Philadelphia by William Ellis Tucker and his various partners. Jugs, or pitchers, tea sets and dinner services were well decorated with flower paintings and monochrome landscapes, together with fine gilding. Many such pieces have so much in common with the contemporary French porcelains, that positive attributions can only be made by reference to pattern-books preserved in the Philadelphia Museum.
Art porcelain did not really become popular in the United States until after the 1876 Centennial Celebration, from which time Cincinnati, Ohio, became the centre for this new taste. This attracted many art potteries, including the Rookwood porcelain, which was the only one to survive beyond 1890. Mrs Maria Longworth Nichols, a well-to-do Cincinnati socialite, was primarily interested in the creation of finely designed wares, rather than establishing a commercial success. Aided by friends skilled in the appropriate arts, Mrs Nichols succeeded in producing a wide variety of most interesting effects on wares. These wares were in great demand from 1880, when the first kiln-firing took place, until 1941, when the firm became bankrupt. The early years were very unprofitable, but by 1889 Rookwood porcelain was well established and a wide range of artistic wares was being produced. These included some original underglaze painting, under the direction of William Watts Taylor, who moved the production to large premises in 1892. By 1900 the Rookwood porcelain was the foremost American art porcelain.
Zanesville, Ohio, was also a popular centre for the manufacture of art porcelain. The foremost concern was the Lonhuda porcelain, originally located at Steubenville and purchased by Samuel Weller of Zanesville as an addition to his existing factory. Their wares had a great similarity to those of Rockwood and included various fruit, flowers and figures
Principal handle-types on pre-Nippon porcelain teapots, sugar bowls, creamers and other pieces. The handle, centre, top row, was used on chocolate pots.
ainted in coloured slips on a dark ground and covered with a brilliant glaze. Some of their pieces were painted with characters from the works of Charles Dickens, the English author. However, such ill-fitting decoration under a matt glaze cannot be considered too successful.
There is great similarity in some of the matt-glazed forms made by the Grueby Faience Company of Boston, Massachusetts, and those of the Martin brothers, working in London at about the same time. They both seemed to be inspired by the leaf forms, which played such a large part in Art Nouveau in many European countries.
Japan
The years 1868-90 saw the growth in Japan of pre-Nippon porcelain wares. These export wares represent a transition period in Japanese porcelain and while the form and decoration show Western influences they still retain their Japanese heritage. Most pieces have no mark or when they do it is usually the potter’s name. Characteristically the wares are extremely individual and exhibit a high standard of workmanship.
By the 1870s the kilns of Arita and Seto were producing these wares in large quantities but the blandness that accompanies true mass production is happily absent. The new occidental form is particularly noticeable in the handles and spouts of these pieces. Handles on teapots and chocolate pots were often in underglaze blue and elaborately painted, while the spouts were short and pointed and did not pour well, for the Japanese concept of a teapot was rather different from the Western designs they were trying to imitate. The join of the handle to the body was often quite intricate and pieces of this period can be dated from these handles, later examples showing a clumsiness in design and workmanship.
Many of the pieces were footed and the number of feet – usually three, five or seven – is typical of the Japanese predilection for irregularity in design. Small pieces were made with solid, curved feet and large wares with hollow ones ; the feet for large pieces were made in a drain mould and had a small hole on the inside to prevent the build-up of pressure during firing.
Ornamental vases are a perfect example of the blending of East and West, for the true Japanese vase was made to hold flowers and therefore be as unobtrusive as possible. Ornamental vases were made entirely for export. The decoration on these vases was often highly detailed and intricate and often had as many as four kinds of coralene beading on one piece, with the beading on the front differing from that on the back. The beading can be a help when estimating the age of a piece, complex beading rather. than the impression of complex beading indicating pre-Nippon wares as opposed to later imitations. Beading on smaller ware is also indicative of this period.
Roses and chrysanthemums are the principally used floral decoration and these are all painstakingly painted, unlike the wares of later periods which use blobs of colour surrounded by the appropriate outline. Floral designs on the front of a piece were usually different from those on the back – often fewer flowers and a different arrangement of colours.
The Artist–porcelain Movement
During the late decades of the 19th century most major industrial potteries were influenced by Japanese taste. Thereafter, designers turned Vase made at the Rookwood porcelain, 1890.
to either the old traditional patterns in vogue during the earlier years of the century, or the simple functional designs made in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Milan, the various Scandinavian factories and especially England. In Great Britain, the ideas of Keith Murry are seen on Wedgwood wares of the 1930s, clearly indicating that formerly the designer was an architect working with a rule and compass.
It is fortunate that during this same period many skilled potters preferred to use clays as a new means of expressing personal feelings towards their craft. Today, many artist-potters are creating wares destined to be the antiques of the future.
The earliest evidence of the artist-potter obviously under the influence of the Near and Far Eastern potter was seen in the work of the Frenchman Th6odore Deck (d.1891), who opened a studio in Paris in 1856 and continued to produce beautiful painted earthenwares in the Islamic manner until he became Director of Sevres art department in 1887. While Deck is best known for his painting, Ernest Chaplet, who was working at Bourg-la-Refine in the 1870s, later specialized in glaze techniques and produced a wide range of unique effects on both stoneware and porcelain. They often equalled the glazes of the Chinese potter. Similar beautifully glazed stoneware was made in France by Adrien Dalpuyrat during the last decade of the 19th century. His contemporary, Auguste Delaherche, who produced some fine glazed stonewares, sometimes decorated in the sgraffiato technique.
The French artist-porcelain movement was particularly evident during the 1920s and 1930s, when many original and interesting wares were produced by George Serre, Jean Besnard, Jean Mayoden, Rene Buthaud and Paul Beyer, the latter reviving the technique of salt-glazed stonewares.
The vogue for artist-porcelain was soon to be seen in other European countries, especially Germany, where some interesting shapes and techniques were produced around the turn of the century by such potters as Herman Mutz of Altona. He was strongly influenced by Japanese porcelain and his son Richard also made some interesting stonewares in Berlin, often decorated with attractive ‘flowing’ glazes. These glazes appear to be suddenly ‘frozen’ from their liquid state. They were also very successfully applied by Julius Scharvogel, who was working in Munich in about 1900.
Following the First World War, there was a revived interest in Germany and the works of many potters active during the 1920s are to be seen in public and private collections. Foremost of this school was Bontjes van Beeck, a naturalized German of Dutch descent, who was extremely successful with his finely glazed stonewares in the styles of the Chinese Sung period. Since 1946, artist-potters have been working in both East and West Germany. The work of Ingeborg and Bruno Ahoff, working in Bochum in the 1960s, was highly original. They produced many simple shapes as a ground for ‘bubbly’ glazes.
The artist-porcelain movement in Scandinavia was quite strong by the 1880s, when Thorwald Bindesboll was creating decorative earthenware in Denmark. Most Scandinavian potters of the earlier period seemingly preferred the lower-fired earthenwares to stoneware, and often relied more upon applied decoration than original glaze effects. This was certainly so with Herman A. Kahler of Naestved, Denmark, who had great success with metallic lustres.
The division between the artist-potter and the porcelain industry is not so marked in Scandinavia, due to many factories providing the facilities for the artist-potter to experiment and create individual work. This was in addition to using his talents in designing for a greater production of wares made industrially. This practice has been a great asset to such fine potters as Axel Salto at the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Factory, Stig Lindberg at Gustaysberg, Harry Stalhane at R6rstrand and Toini Muona at the Arabia factory, Helsinki, Finland.
The first wares which may well be termed artist-porcelain in England were similarly sponsored by industry. The factory at Doulton, in Lambeth, London, had been in production since 1815 and their wares consisted of domestic and industrial salt-glazed stonewares. In 1871, students of the Lambeth School of Art were invited to work at the factory to choose jugs and vases to the shape required and to apply their original decoration. This was usually incised, carved or applied in a range of browns, blues and greys. The artists were then required to sign their work. Today, the individual work of such former students as Hannah Barlow, George Tinworth and Frank Butler is in great demand.
Salt-glaze stoneware was also the preference for the now famous Martin brothers, who from 1873 were working at Fulham, London. Later they moved to Southall on the western outskirts of London. Walter and Edwin Martin were trained at the Doulton studios, but much of their work was decorated with floral forms inspired by Japanese taste which enjoyed much popularity following the London International Exhibition of 1862.
It was in 1872 that William de Morgan started a workshop in Chelsea, London, where he specialized in the painting of tiles and porcelain in lustres of the greens and blues seen on so much Persian porcelain of the 15th-19th centuries. De Morgan’s work was quickly appreciated and it became necessary for him to employ more staff, including the painters Charles and Fred Passenger and Frank Iles. Due to the founder’s ill health the factory closed in 1907.
In 1905 the Moore brothers’ porcelain factory at Longton was sold and Bernard Moore started his own business in Stoke. Moore had experimented with flambe glazes and now made decorative flambe ware using such artists as Hilda Beardmore, Dora Billington and John Adams. Flambee ware was also made by two of Moore’s pupils, E. R. Wilkes and J. Howson under their own names. G. L. Ashworth & Bros. of Hanley were also making flambe glazed porcelain at this time.
The now much collected Ruskin porcelain was the achievement of William Howson Taylor, the son of the headmaster of the Birmingham Art School. In 1898 he built his own porcelain at Smethwick and began experiments with high temperature glazes with the assistance of some craftsmen from Wedgwoods. His experiments were highly successful and he went on to produce a range of high temperature glaze effects, lustres and monochromes, calling the latter ’souffle glazes.
Few of these early artist-potters were completely responsible from start to finish for the work they were involved with. Possibly the first true artist-potter was the world renowned Bernard Leach, who was initially trained at the Slade School of Art to be a teacher of drawing and etching. Leach then spent about 11 years in Japan where he received training as a potter under a Japanese master. He then returned to England accompanied by a Japanese potter, Shoji Hamada. Together they established a porcelain at St Ives in Cornwall. Leach and Hamada worked together, using all locally obtained materials, from which they produced a wide variety of wares, including Japanese style stonewares and traditional English slip-trailed earthenwares.
Many now-famous English potters worked at some period during their training at St Ives, where Leach ran his porcelain on a community basis. This enabled them to produce many modestly priced and readily saleable wares, while allowing them to create original and personal work. Michael Cardew, Nora Braden and Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie all owe a great deal of their success to the knowledge gained from the master, Bernard Leach.
Hamada returned to Japan in 1924 and has worked there ever since. His style carries the influence of Japanese folk porcelain, English slipware and Y1 Dynasty Korean porcelain. All of Hamada’s work in high-fired stoneware is intended for domestic use including plates, bowls, teapots, bottles, jars and flower vases. This stoneware has a rough texture which contrasts well with the wood-ash and milky feldspar glazes he uses.
Nippon Wares
Nippon wares are those which bear the name ‘Nippon’ and appeared in the years 1891-1921. The McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 decreed that all articles imported into the United States should bear the name of the country of origin in English. Nippon being the Japanese name for their country this name was used on porcelain from 1891 until 1921 when the U.S. treasury ruled that ‘Japan’ should be used instead since Nippon was a Japanese word.
Early Nippon period wares still showed the blend of East and West characteristic of the pre-Nippon porcelain, while the later pieces become more and more Westernized; handles in particular show Western influence and feet are reduced to small balls of clay. Early Nippon wares still bear the hand of the individual potter but from about 1915 mass production had taken hold and the same moulds tended to be used repeatedly. Also in this period the use of the jigger gradually took hold as a result of which the wares became less attractive. The most characteristic wares of this period were chocolate sets and while the moulds used were almost identical, the quality of the porcelain varies enormously. The finest 19th century porcelain is that bearing the Rising Sun symbol.
Tags: 19th century, Art Nouveau, bone china, gilding, japanese porcelain, Jugs, quality reproductions, shropshire, staffordshire, wedgwood group, white china