It is obviously absurd to have asserted that such china was merely experimental. The collector of to-day has more than hall-marked Bristol porcelain. Recently, at Christie’s Auction Rooms, £168 was paid for two small cups and a tea tray, and, alas! Cookworthy and Champion died unsuccessful men. If they are recognised to-day as martyrs to the ceramic art, their own generation were somewhat stiff-necked to their genius and enterprise.
BRISTOL VASE (121⁄4 IN. HIGH).
In the Fry Collection.
The vase which we reproduce shows to what perfection the manufacturers had reached. Among the decorators of Bristol was Henry Bone, afterwards an R.A., and miniature enameller to the Royal Family. Bone was apprenticed to Champion for seven years, dating from January, 1772.
This vase, in the possession of the Fry family of Bristol, is of hexagonal shape and is 121⁄4 inches in height. The landscapes are excellently painted, and it has well-modelled female busts on two of its sides, from which hang festoons of raised flowers in white. This vase and the other splendid and almost priceless vases in the possession of the same family are not marked. It appears that although only Champion’s name appears on the documents in connection with the Bristol factory, he had partners who assisted him financially, one of whom was Joseph Fry, whose only return, when the factory was discontinued, for the money he had sunk into the concern, was the set of vases now in the hands of his descendants.
We now come to the last act of Bristol. Wedgwood writes to Bentley in a letter, dated August 24, 1778, concerning Champion’s failure: “Poor Champion, you may have heard, is quite demolished; it was never likely to be otherwise, as he had neither professional knowledge, sufficient capital, nor scarcely any real acquaintance with the materials he was working upon. I suppose we might buy some Growan Stone and Growan Clay now upon easy terms, for they have prepared a large quantity this last year.”
His patent right was sold by Champion to a company of Staffordshire potters who continued the manufacture at New Hall for some little time until the ordinary soft paste was allowed to supersede Champion’s hard paste. So ended the triumphs of Bristol and Plymouth. It appears that from November, 1781, to April, 1782, Champion left his native city to superintend the works of the china company who had purchased his rights. But Edmund Burke came to his rescue, and, conjointly with Burke’s son Richard, Champion was appointed deputy paymaster-general. Champion occupied official apartments in Chelsea Hospital. In July a change of ministry lost him his post, but in April, 1783, he regained it, only to resign on the fall of the famous Coalition Ministry in January, 1784. In October, 1784, he left England for South Carolina, where he became a planter. Seven years after leaving England he died of fever, and lies buried in the New World.
There is nothing to be said—his fate was the fate of so many enthusiasts and workers in the field of art. Nobody has ever unveiled a monument to Champion’s memory or to Cookworthy’s memory. Nobody has designed a stained-glass window to record their ceramic triumphs.[1] Their monument—and it is a lasting one—lies on the china shelf; the votaries of Plymouth and of Bristol porcelain need no spark to quicken their fire.
We know Browning’s “Waring” and his unfulfilled promise of greatness, and how the friend who has lost him, “like a ghost at break of day,” wishes him back—