“And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetishly
After the scole of Stratford-atte-Bow,
For Frenche of Paris was to her unknowe.”
But should china collectors who travel down the Great Eastern Railway wish a further fillip to remind them of Bow, sundry soap and candle factories, with stench so strong that it knocks at the railway windows, will arrest their straying thoughts. The literary reader may, when he catches glimpses of the brown and oily ooze of the River Lea, think of Coleridge’s lines to Cologne and the River Rhine.
And here at Bow linger still the memories of the old factory—a century old—where Quin as Falstaff was turned out in porcelain, and Garrick posed as Richard III. in a china figure. A match factory stands on the site of the old Bow China factory, but there is still a “China Row” to suggest the old days of “New Canton” and its wares.
BOW TEAPOT.
Decorated in underglaze blue, in Chinese style. (Height 81⁄4 ins.)
