PLYMOUTH
The name of Plymouth stands high in the records of English china factories. Its porcelain was the first hard porcelain produced in this country. Other English chinas melted when placed inside the pieces in the Plymouth kilns.
Not so well known as Josiah Wedgwood, of the Staffordshire potteries, William Cookworthy, of Plymouth, Quaker, chemist, porcelain maker, is worthy of a niche in the gallery of dead princes of ceramic art, and his is a name that will never be forgotten by those who know the history behind the old Plymouth vases and mugs and statues.
It is true the enterprise was a failure. It only ran fourteen years, and was, in 1774, transferred to Bristol. It is true that Lord Camelford, one of his partners, laments the three thousand pounds expended on it. But it is more than true that the results of William Cookworthy’s efforts were no failure.
The brief life history of the Quaker dreamer (we know he must have been a dreamer, for he translated some of Swedenborg’s works into English) is remarkable. At the age of fourteen, the eldest of a family of six fatherless children, he tramped from Plymouth up to London and commenced his apprenticeship to a chemist. His mother battled on, eking out her slender means by dressmaking. Later on, when William Cookworthy came home, his mother lived under his roof and became a leading favourite with the great people he knew. The poor Devon lad who wearily tramped to London over down and dale, dreaming golden dreams, came home to entertain Dr. Wolcot, the famous “Peter Pindar” of vitriolic pen, Sir Joseph Banks, Captain Cook, and the fighting Earl St. Vincent, who remarked, “whoever was in Mr. Cookworthy’s company was the wiser and better for having been in it”; while Smeaton, the builder of the Eddystone Lighthouse, was an inmate of his house during the erection of the lighthouse.
In an early letter of Cookworthy’s we find him speaking of a certain unnamed, strange individual who came to him with some china earth. “’Twas found in the back of Virginia, where he was in quest of mines; and having read Duhalde, discovered both the petuntse and kaolin. ’Tis the latter earth he says, is the essential thing towards the success of the manufacture. He is gone for a cargo of it, having bought the whole country of the Indians where it rises.” We hear no more of this mysterious individual; but we do hear of extensive and painstaking researches by Cookworthy, till at length he is rewarded by discovering the very earth he wanted, in Cornwall, on the estate of Lord Camelford.
He established himself at Coxside, at the extreme angle which juts into the water at Sutton Pool. The buildings subsequently became a shipwright’s yard, and even then bore the name China House. We wonder, do they exist now?
The early examples of Plymouth are clumsy, sometimes very coarse and rough. Experience was wanting in firing. Most of the pieces were disfigured by fire-cracks. Of those decorated in blue the colour had run into the glazing. But Cookworthy did one thing—he was the first to produce cobalt blue direct from the ore.
The white ware of Plymouth, in which is introduced as ornament shells and seaweed and coral, is very artistic, and is one of the features of Plymouth, although none of this ware is marked. They mostly consist of salt-cellars, pickle-cups, and what would now be used to put roses in. The salt-cellar we illustrate is one of a pair in the Bethnal Green Museum; it has a plain, white body and cloudy glaze, and is unmarked. Similar shapes are believed to have been made at Bow. We reproduce a dainty piece, a shell dish of beautiful design, and ask—was Cookworthy a failure?
During the latter part of the fourteen years that Plymouth produced her china, Cookworthy, then nearing his seventieth year, thought to emulate Sèvres and Dresden, and employed several artists for decoration. He engaged the services of a French artist named Soqui from Sèvres, and he and Henry Bone, of Plymouth—one of his own apprentices—produced some finely-painted birds and flowers.
WHITE PORCELAIN DISH—PLYMOUTH.
The mark of the Plymouth china is blue on the early clumsy pieces, and later was neatly drawn in red, sometimes blue. It is the chemical symbol for tin, being doubtless adopted by Cookworthy to denote that his materials came from the tin district. It is like the figure four, with a little curved loop at the beginning.
VASE (16 IN. HIGH), PLYMOUTH.
In the Fry Collection at Bristol.
We reproduce a fine specimen of a splendid vase, hexagonal shape, sixteen inches high, in the possession of the Fry family at Bristol. It is richly decorated with festoons of finely modelled raised flowers, with painted butterflies and borders. This was the forerunner of the exquisite Bristol vase made by the firm which bought Cookworthy’s life secrets.
Devon and Plymouth suggest Elizabethan days and one man’s name flashes uppermost, but—
“Drake he’s in his hammock, but a thousand mile away
(Capten, art tha sleepin’ there below?),
Slung atween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay,
An’ dreamin’ arl the time o’ Plymouth Hoe.”
But there are heroes of peace and the arts of peace and that art of all arts, the art of self-effacement and William Cookworthy is one.
PLYMOUTH MARKS.
BRISTOL PORCELAIN.
Under-glaze Mandarin Decoration in Blue.