We have dealt with the earlier ware made there—of the blue and white porcelain and of the delft ware probably made in Holland; we now come to the higher and finer products of Lowestoft, over which so many debates have taken place. It has been held that this ware was decorated at Lowestoft, but that it was real Oriental body imported in its half-finished state from the East, and only painted and re-fired in this country. However, on the signed testimony of one of the workmen, it is positively stated that no Oriental porcelain ever came into the factory at Lowestoft to be decorated. “No manufactured articles were brought there to be painted, and every article painted in the factory had been previously made there.”
The question, too, of hard paste being made at Lowestoft is now disproved; among all the recently discovered fragments is nothing of hard paste.
The theory that porcelain came over from China through Holland to Lowestoft, if it be examined, does not hold water. First, it would not have paid, especially as then a large duty existed on china imported, whereas Lowestoft china was produced at a fairly cheap cost, and supplied to the public to compete with Worcester, and Derby, and the Staffordshire makers. Again, when the Lowestoft factory broke up, there would naturally have been a lot of unfinished Oriental porcelain in its white state, prior to the decoration, thrown on the market. What became of it all in 1802? Nobody ever seems to have seen any white china bowls, or white tea services, or white vases.
But there is a certain amount of mystery about Lowestoft, and a great quantity of ware exists both in this country and abroad, which is classed as Lowestoft china, but which is really Oriental porcelain with British armorial bearings.
In fact, the little factory has provided a considerable field for speculation as to what it did and what it did not produce. For so small a factory there is quite a literature in magazine articles, and one volume has been written upon it. The factory started about 1765, and closed down in 1802. When it closed its kilns and heaps of shards were hurriedly buried, it extinguished the hope of an art that promised to be greater. The abandonment of an art industry always breaks some hearts. There is just one fleeting glimpse of one of the old painters when teacups and roses were no longer wanted.
Perhaps some of our readers will look under the rose and read a story, sad enough, but true of many a craftsman at the end of the day. One old artist who, by your leave, ladies, painted red roses and twined chains of rosy wreaths, who put smiles and sunshine with his artful brush on to your tea services, had a very aching heart at the end of the journey. Fate herself twined a chain of grey roses for him. He was blind and poor. In his old age, he laboured, a broken-down old man, in the heat of the sun. A couple of donkeys given to him out of charity enabled him to bring water into Lowestoft. A beggar, he would slake a beggar’s thirst. “Wreaths of roses”—there is something gruesome in the sound of the words. Handle your china cups with more tenderness: human lives have gone to the making of them. The white-hot furnace and the minute brush-mark of your rose petal turned a man’s day to dark night. Roses and wreaths of roses, and behind them all—tears.
RARE LOWESTOFT COFFEE-POT.
Decoration in Oriental style in blue.
In the possession of Mr. Merrington Smith, Lowestoft.