English Porcelain Factories 3

Bow

In 1744 a patent was taken out by Thomas Frye and a partner for a method of making porcelain using a clay imported from America. Four years later, Frye alone took out another patent in which bone-ash was included as a further ingredient. It is known that a man named George Arnold financed the company until his death in 1751, but little is certain yet about the type of ware produced before that date. Visual identification can be confirmed with reasonable certainty; Bow was the first factory to incorporate bone-ash in the paste used, and its presence can be proved by simple chemical analysis. In 1753 the firm opened a warehouse in Cornhill, in the City of London, and employed an ex-navy man, John Bowcock, as clerk; some of Bowcock's account books and papers have been preserved, although others have since been lost, and they add a little to the meagre history known at present.

Bow made many figures, but only rarely do they approach the standards of modelling and painting of Chelsea. Contemporary accounts reveal that they concentrated on tableware, and much of this, decorated in underglaze blue, has survived. Many of the earlier pieces were sold uncoloured, and those that were painted often show decoration in the current Chinese and Japanese styles. Many of the figures are after Dresden models, but a number are original; mugs were a popular production and on many of them the handle terminates in the shape of a heart where it is joined to the body. The factory closed in 1776 after one of the later owners had died and the other had gone bankrupt, and like Chelsea it was bought by Duesbury of Derby. Many of the figures can be recognized by the use of a vivid purple-red colour used often to outline the scrolling on bases, and by an opaque blue enamel used for clothing, etc. The edges of plates and other pieces sometimes show small areas of brown staining where the glaze is thin or absent. There was no definite mark used on the factory's wares, but a number of different ones were used by painters. Most of the pieces are unmarked.

Derby

It has been suggested that the Derby factory was making porcelain as early as 1745, but the earliest actual evidence is a number of white cream jugs inscribed with the name of the town and the date 1750. William Duesbury, who had been a painter of figures bought in the white, became proprietor at some date before 1760, and Derby ware began to be advertised as 'the second Dresden'. Duesbury bought up the Longton Hall factory and also those at Bow and Chelsea; all three of which he closed eventually and concentrated his energies on Derby. On his death in 1786 he was succeeded by his son, and after some further changes the factory was bought by Robert Bloor and closed finally in 1848.

The earliest pieces are unmarked and not easy to recognize; the figures have unglazed bases with the glaze shrinking away from the edge, and a funnel-shaped hole in the centre. Later wares include a large number of figures, usually made in pairs, of which the characteristic feature is the presence under the base of three or four dirty patches, each about half an inch in dia­meter, where the piece stood on flat pads of clay in the kiln. Al­though these patch-marks appear occasionally on the products of other factories, their presence is consistent with Derby and they are rarely missing. A further feature that distinguishes most of these figures is the use of an opaque turquoise green paint in the decoration; a green that is often stained brown.

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Derby factory

It has been suggested that the Derby factory was making porcelain as early as 1745, but the earliest actual evidence is a number of white cream jugs inscribed with the name of the town and the date 1750.