On the death of old Josiah Spode, in 1798, his son Josiah continued the business, and commenced the manufacture of porcelain, which he improved by the addition of bone-ash and of felspar. He died in 1827, and was succeeded by his cousin, Josiah Spode. This third Josiah Spode died a few years afterwards, at which date the name Spode practically disappears from the firm.
Josiah Spode the second was the most successful potter of his day. It is pleasing to be able to record that he acquired a considerable fortune—a lot not often within the reach of potters, successful or otherwise.
About the year 1805 he introduced a fine ware which he termed opaque porcelain. This ware became very popular and was of excellent manufacture. While Nelson was fighting the French at Trafalgar, and breaking their naval pretensions, Josiah Spode was inflicting a commercial blow upon that unhappy country. Spode—and in his wake came other Staffordshire manufacturers—inundated France and other countries on the Continent with this new stone china of his, which entirely superseded their fayence. This injury was a very real one to the poor potters of France, inasmuch as a great number of them had to abandon the manufacture.
We have already alluded to the impressed mark Spode or SPODE. On some of the finer pieces the name is painted in red, and sometimes it is written in gold, as in our third mark in an angular hand, running upwards. The stamped mark usually in red, “Spode’s New Fayence” and “Spode Stone China,” appears on the ironstone ware. Oftentimes the mark is not stamped on the middle of the plate underneath, but at the side, while sometimes the name is both stamped and impressed. Besides the marks we give there are more than half a dozen other forms used by the factory, but all of them containing the word “Spode,” and therefore not presenting difficulties to the collector.
SOME SPODE MARKS.
Of three marked Spode plates in possession of the writer, of typical Spode decoration, which was largely influenced by Japanese art, we give two as a headpiece. It will be observed that the left-hand plate in the headpiece, which has a vivid blue background, is fretted with a geometric pattern as a design. This is intended to represent ice, and the may-flowers of the covering decoration are intended to convey, by the Chinese artist who invented it, the symbolic meaning of young love being chilled by adversity. The other plate in the same illustration is of a brilliant canary-coloured ground, covered with a gossamer-like network of cobwebs, above which bird and flowers are painted.
The third plate shows very strongly the influence of the East in its method of decoration; but instead of pagoda and delicate curves, the English artist has almost brutally placed a piece of European architecture on the other half of the plate, which by its incongruity mars the remainder.
