Pinxton.
The village of Pinxton (a large parish in East Derbyshire, close on the borders of Nottinghamshire) is principally inhabited by colliers and other “hardy sons of toil,” who work in the ironstone mines and at the furnaces of the neighbourhood. The manor belongs to the family of Coke, the same family as the Cokes of Trusley and the Cokes of Melbourne, and to one of this family, John Coke, Esq., the establishment of the china works is owing. Mr. John Coke was the youngest brother of D’Ewes Coke, Esq., the lord of the manor; the second brother being Sir William Coke, Judge of the Supreme Court, Ceylon, who died at Trincomalee, in Ceylon. The present head of the family is Lieut.-Col. E. T. Coke, of Debdale. Mr. John Coke, who was born in 1775, passed several of the early years of his life at Dresden, and there, doubtless, acquired that love for porcelain ware which induced him to commence the manufactory at Pinxton on his return to this country. Having an idea that some clays found on the family estates near Pinxton might be made available for the manufacture of china ware, Mr. Coke entered into correspondence with Mr. Duesbury, of the Derby China Works, and sent him samples of his clays for trial and experiment. Whatever encouragement or otherwise he received from Mr. Duesbury—and I have reason to believe that encouragement was not given—the result of his own convictions and his own trials, &c., determined Mr. Coke on starting the works, and he ultimately made an engagement with William Billingsley, of the Derby China Works (which see, page 102); and having built a somewhat large and very conveniently arranged factory, commenced the manufacture of china ware in 1796.
William Billingsley was the son of William and Mary Billingsley, of the parish of St. Alkmund, Derby. In 1774 he was apprenticed by his widowed mother to Mr. Duesbury, the proprietor of the Derby China Manufactory, for five years, “to learn the art of painting upon china or porcelain ware,” as I have already shown in my notice of Billingsley on page 101, ante. In 1796 he left the Derby China Works, where he had been employed for the long period of twenty-two years, and removed to Pinxton, occupying, with his wife, his wife’s mother, and two daughters, a part of the factory built by Mr. Coke. Here Billingsley succeeded in producing that beautiful granular body which he afterwards perfected at Nantgarw and at Swansea; and here, too, stimulated by Mr. Coke’s good taste, he introduced faultless forms in his services and a high style of excellence in decoration. He brought with him several experienced workmen and artists from the Derby Works, and took into the factory, and instructed, several young people of Pinxton and its neighbourhood. His own time was thus so fully occupied with the management of the works, with the arrangement of the concern, and with the “overlooking” of the persons employed, that, unfortunately, his own skill and his own splendid colouring of roses and other flowers were lost to the manufacture; and thus we do not find that the expressed fear of his late Derby employers that “his going into another factory will put them in the way of doing flowers in the same way, which they are at present entirely ignorant of,” was sustained. In fact, while employed by Mr. Duesbury, Billingsley was in every way master of the art he had been taught; and he had acquired a peculiar method—entirely peculiar to himself—of painting roses which, with his free and truly artistic grouping and harmonious arrangement of colours, made his pieces so much sought after, that orders were constantly sent in for objects “painted with Billingsley’s flowers.” At this period of course his whole time was devoted to painting, and his heart was in his work. After leaving his employer, his attention was naturally, in the new sphere in which he found himself at Pinxton, almost wholly given to the practical instead of the Art portion of the establishment, and thus none, or scarcely any, of the known examples of Pinxton china bear evidence of being his handiwork. Indeed, it is not too much to say that, from the time when he closed his connection with the Derby Works, his Art-skill declined, but his manufacturing skill became more and more apparent.
The works at Pinxton were built by the side of the canal, and the workshops formed three sides of a square. These are still in existence at the present day, and are shown in the accompanying vignette, from a sketch made for the purpose. They are now converted into cottages, and are occupied by colliers and others. The kilns, &c., have entirely disappeared. The place and cottages are still called “China Square,” or “Factory Square.”
Through some misunderstanding or other, the arrangement between Messrs. Coke and Billingsley was not of long duration, and in a very few years—probably about 1800 or 1802—Billingsley left the place and removed to Mansfield, where, it is said, he for some time occupied himself in decorating and finishing china ware which he bought in the white state in Staffordshire. He afterwards, as I have already shown, removed to Torksey, Worcester, Nantgarw, Swansea, and Coalport, and died about 1827 or 1828.
Fig. 114.
Mr. Coke married in 1806 and settled at Debdale Hall, where he died in 1841, in his sixty-sixth year, leaving his estates to Lieut.-Col. Coke, their present possessor. At Debdale are preserved, with religious care, some of the finest examples ever made at Pinxton. These pieces were brought there by the founder of the works, Mr. John Coke just spoken of, and have remained there ever since. They consist of large semicircular spill-stands, mugs, &c., beautifully painted with views, one of which, a view of the family seat of Brookhill Hall, is remarkably fine. Some of the stands are grounded in the Dresden canary colour, and the whole are very choice and unique examples of Pinxton porcelain.
The group of china here engraved is a selection of pieces made during Billingsley’s time at Pinxton. The pieces are all remarkable for the beauty of the body and of the glaze, and some of them are also noticeable for the excellence of the gilding. The coffee-pot in the centre is one of a set bearing, in oval borders, views of different places either in Derbyshire or elsewhere. These landscapes are excellently painted, of a peculiar brownish effect which pervades the whole colouring, by James Hadfield, who was the best landscape painter at the works. The views on the pieces which have come under my notice are of local and other places: for instance, Pinxton Church, Darley Hall, Hartington Bridge, Ashwood Dale, Buxton, Wingerworth Hall, Tong Castle, Saltram, Menai Straits, Wanstead Church, Frog Hall, Caerphilly Castle, &c. The teapot and stand are of elegant shape, unusually narrow and carefully gilt; the stand is of peculiar form. The cup and saucer have the “Derby sprig” (Tournay sprig), as it is frequently called. The coffee-mug and flower-pot tell their own tale.
Fig. 115.
After the close of Billingsley’s connection with the Pinxton Works they were carried on by Mr. Coke with the assistance of a Mr. Banks. Afterwards Mr. Coke took Mr. John Cutts to manage the concern, and he became a partner in the works. In the later part of the time the manufactory was carried on by Cutts alone. At the close of the Pinxton Works, which took place about 1818, Mr. Cutts removed into Staffordshire—fixing himself at Lane End—where he commenced business; at first buying ware in the white and finishing it for sale. In 1811, Davies says, “There is a considerable porcelain manufactory at Pinxton, which finds employment for several hands.”
After Billingsley’s removal from Pinxton the character of the ware underwent a change. The granular body of which I have spoken as produced, and afterwards brought to such perfection, by him, was his own secret, and he zealously kept it. On leaving Pinxton this secret, naturally, went with him, and, of course, the goods produced after that time were of a different and much inferior body. The later ware approached pretty closely the ordinary china body of the time, and had a slightly bluish tint in the glaze. The decoration was also, as a rule, not equal to what it had been in the earlier days of the factory.
Among the workmen brought from Derby along with Billingsley, were Thomas Moore, a clever thrower; Ash, also a clever thrower and turner, and many others of repute. Among the painters, &c., were James Hadfield, a good landscape painter; Edward Rowland, a landscape painter; Morrell, who painted landscapes and flowers; Richard Robins, from London; William Alvey, and others, including Slater and Marriott. Alvey left Pinxton about 1803, and became master of Edingley School, near Southwell, where he died in 1867, aged about eighty-three. He had a numerous family, some of whom re-settled at Pinxton. Alvey was held in high respect at Edingley, and was possessed of remarkable natural gifts; he was an excellent musician, a clever draughtsman and colourist, a first-rate mathematician, a splendid penman, a very fair land-surveyor, and a poet of no mean order. He was fond of drawing and painting to the last.
No especial mark was used at the Pinxton Works. The number of the pattern was occasionally given, and sometimes a workman’s mark was added; and although other marks were used, none seem to have been adopted as distinctive of the works. A writing letter
and a Roman capital letter P have both been noticed as occurring on isolated specimens. A tea service, named to me by Capt. G. Talbot Coke, bears, however, inside the lid of the teapot, the word Pinxton, written in gold letters. The service is of a beautifully clear white china, with broad edges of burnished gold; a handsome arabesque border of red, blue, and gold ornamenting each piece.
One peculiarity connected with the Pinxton China Works remains to be noticed: it is the issuing of china tokens, i.e., tokens representing different values of money, made of china, and payable as money among the workpeople and others, including shopkeepers. These were issued in a time of difficulty, so that they were only temporary conveniences, and thus they possess great interest. They were of two distinct kinds. The general form was a circular disc of white china, thicker in the middle than at the edges—in fact, exactly of the form of a common magnifying glass—and bore on the obverse a figure of 5 in the centre, and the words, “Let the Bearer have in goods five shillings,” in four lines across. On the reverse a similar figure 5 and the words, “which place to account with John Coke, Pinxton. Decr. 24th, 1801,” in five lines across. The writing is in blue, and the tokens are well glazed. They were issued of various values, as 10s., 7s. 6d., 5s., 3s. 6d., 1s. 6d., and 1s. respectively. The one here engraved belongs to W. S. Coke, Esq., of Brookhill, and I am indebted for it to his nephew Capt. J. Talbot Coke. Others bore, as shown on the next engraving, simply the figure of value, gilt or painted on an oval disc. These tokens were used as promissory notes, and when returned to the works by their holders their value in money was given for them, and they were broken up and destroyed. They were payable in and around Pinxton, on one side as far as Sutton, but their payment did not extend to Mansfield. They were called “Mr. Coke’s coin,” or “Chainé money” (china money), in the provincialism of the locality.[35]
Let the
Bearer have
5
in goods
five shillings
which place
to account with
5
John Coke
Pinxton Decr 24th
1801.
Fig. 116.
7s.
5s.
Figs. 117 & 118.
It is pleasant to see how the memory of the old china works at Pinxton is cherished by its inhabitants of the present day, among whom some of the people who worked there are still, at a ripe old age, living. One of these, in her eighty-fifth year, who began to work at the factory when but a child of some eleven years of age (at that time named Elizabeth Smith), and became ultimately the chief burnisher of the works, was, when I saw her a few years back, in full possession of all her faculties, and delighted in describing, with marvellous accuracy, all the processes employed. To her wonderful memory, and to that of others, as well as to documents and long personal research, I owe the information which I, in 1868, for the first time, gave in the Art-Journal, and now repeat, in regard to this interesting manufactory.