|
|
The manufacture of soft-paste porcelain was begun in Worcester, chief city of Worcestershire and 110 miles north of London. No fanfare accompanied this or any similar project of the time, for the eighteenth century was not one of italics; it had unhurried dignity, with both written and spoken word measured and veering slightly toward the ponderous. The simple facts are that in 1751 Worcester, which had long been a centre for glove making and the weaving of broadcloth, found itself in commercial doldrums. To remedy this, a group of fifteen gentlemen quietly organized the Worcester Tonkin Manufacture as a partnership and subscribed forty-five hundred pounds capital. Apparently none of them had had any previous experience in any branch of pottery. The leader in this enterprise was Dr. John Wall, a physician with a good working knowledge of chemistry. His chief assistant was an apothecary named William Davis, believed to have been associated with him in his medical activities. According to articles of partnership, the founders were pledged "to discover for the benefit of themselves and the other subscribers the real true and full art of making porcelain." Like most successful ventures in a new business, Dr. Wall formed his plans carefully, for among the subscribers were Richard Holdship, an experienced engraver, who later was in charge of tranfer-print decoration, and Samuel Bradley, a Worcester silversmith who is held to have supervised the making of many of the molds, since the raised decorations all have a character much like those of silver of the period. There were also two experienced potters, John Lyes and Robert Podmore, for whom additional payments were scheduled "the better to engage their fidelity." Evidently, this had little weight with Podmore, for five years later he left Worcester and assisted Richard Chaffers in establishing his pottery at Liverpool. The speed with which this partnership of fifteen men began making and firing porcelain is' amazing. Warmstry House, an old mansion near the cathedral, was leased from the Earl of Plymouth, kilns were built, and by the next year the Worcester enterprise had absorbed a short-lived porcelain works at Bristol. The latter was duly advertised as "now united with the Worcester Porcelain Company."
The initial years of Worcester china making are always referred to as the Dr. Wall period and run from 1751 to 1783. Under Dr. Wall's leadership, the enterprise was very successful. He was obviously an excellent businessman with a fine artistic sense and thorough understanding of the problems involved in making porcelain. The decorations of this period are of the finest, and he must have attracted to his factory the best artists then working at china, decorating in England. The first advertisement of a sale of Worcester-made
porcelains appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1752, and
stated that it would commence September twentieth. This was obviously
the annual or semi-annual auction by which it was the custom to market
what had been made at potteries and other industrial plants. This method
held for many years, in both England and the United States. In fact, Deming
Jarves employed it some seventy years later at the Sandwich glass factory. But Worcester porcelain of the Dr. Wall period was not wholly given over to copies of Chinese importations. As early as 1757 the factory began to decorate its wares with transfer prints from copper print engravings and two men prepared most of the latter. They were Richard Holdship, already mentioned, and Robert Hancock, a clever engraver who had originally worked at Battersea and apparently brought most of his plates with him. Here one of the outstanding achievements was a very dense black, done both as an under glaze and as an over glaze enamel. Two of the best-known Worcester transfer-print decorations were Hancock's "Tea Party" and his "King of Prussia." Others were done in red and puce. As a development of this means of decorating, Worcester perfected a method known as bat printing. Here, instead of transferring the design from the engraved plate to the piece of porcelain by means of a sheet of paper, small squares of glue were used. Extremely fine effects resulted and pictures by Angelika Kauffmann, Cipriani, and Bartolozzi were reproduced from the originals by these artists. A turning point in the artistic development of Worcester porcelain came in 1768 when a number of the decorators who had worked for Chelsea decided to migrate and joined the staff of Worcester. The porcelains decorated with the exotic birds so generally ascribed to Chelsea date from this time. The same year saw new and large kilns built at Worcester and the factory began to make ambitious pieces of porcelain. Two years later, in accord with the Adam period, porcelains of the neo-classic form and decoration were produced. After Dr. Wall's death in 1776, Davis continued to manage the factory along the lines that its organizer had developed, but he lacked business acumen and Worcester did not prosper. Then in 1783 Davis died, and Thomas Flight, who had been for some years the company's agent at its London warehouse in Cheapside, bought the Worcester Tonkin Manufacture for three thousand pounds. His sons, Joseph and John, were put in charge of the pottery. They changed the character of wares somewhat and introduced more ornate decoration so that Worcester pieces under Flight ownership are distinct from those of the Dr. Wall period. This change of ownership brought about the establishment of a second Worcester porcelain pottery. Robert Chamberlain had been the first apprentice and had risen to head of the decorating department. In 1784 or 1785 with his brother, Humphrey, who had also worked under Dr. Wall and Davis, he established his own works which became known as Chamberlain's Worcester. At first it was solely a decorating shop at which porcelain in the white from the Shropshire pottery at Caughley was used. But the brothers prospered and by 1789 had built kilns at Diglis in Worcestershire and commenced making porcelain as well as decorating it. Naturally there was keen rivalry and sharp competition between the two factories but both continued. In I 793 another change took place at the original factory. Martin Barr was taken into the Flight partnership and the firm name became Flight & Barr. Then in 1807, Martin Barr, the younger, joined the partnership and the name and mark were changed to Barr, Flight & Barr. This it remained until 1829, when the last of the Flights had died and the Barr family carried on for eleven years more. Then it was merged with that established by the Chamberlain brothers and Chamberlain & Company became the name and mark. Finally, in 1862, the entire enterprise was made a joint-stock company under the name of the Worcester Royal Porcelain Company, Ltd., and as such the company founded a hundred and eighty-eight years ago still operates. During the long period between starting in 1751 and the merger of the original pottery with the Chamberlain offshoot, Worcester copied not only Chinese porcelain, but also those of the outstanding European potteries.
|
|
|
Furniture
Glass American
Metal wares
Miscellaneous
Porcelain, Earthenware
Prints & Paintings
Repairs
Silver & Imitations
Textiles & Needlework |