Some porcelain has been, and I believe still is, made at Alcora.
In Portugal, at Oporto, porcelain has been made since 1790, of no supreme qualities.
It is rather singular that the people who first introduced the fine porcelains of China and Japan into Europe, who, for some two centuries, had almost uninterrupted control of the commerce, who brought it by ship-loads to all the countries of Europe, should apparently have had less interest in the subject than any other, should have less of it to show to-day than most others, should have made less effort to produce it in the past, and should be doing almost nothing to-day.
But countries, like men, have their manhood and their dotage, and then they pass out of the active life of the world: such seems to be the condition of Portugal to-day.
CHAPTER XV.
THE PORCELAINS OF ENGLAND.
Bow.—Chelsea.—Derby.—Chelsea-Derby.—Lowestoft.—Worcester.—Chamberlains.—Plymouth.—Bristol.—Pinxton.—Nantgaraw.—Swansea.—Turners.—Coalport.—Coalbrookdale.—Herculaneum.—Shelton, New Hall.—Rockingham.—Spode, Copeland.—Place.—Daniell.—Minton.—Prices and Marks.
IN England, following the discovery and production of porcelain in Saxony, there sprang up a very wide interest in the art. It was not an interest which enlisted all classes there—as, indeed, it did not anywhere in Europe; but among persons of taste and wealth it became of such importance as to be a “fashion.”
The discovery of kaolin-clay in Saxony stimulated enterprising men to seek for it elsewhere.
There is much doubt yet, and there has been a vast amount of time spent upon the question in England, as to when and where the production of china first took place in that country. It is not for me, here in America, to make any attempts to solve it. What I may do is to try to present to our own people, in some compact and readable form, what Marryat, Chaffers, and others in England, have arrived at after much patient research and comparison. Some of the most useful and most important works on pottery and porcelain—of which enough have been written to form a library of themselves—will be mentioned at the end of this book; for in all of them much is to be found of value to those who care to go into this curious and interesting branch of art-production more fully than any one volume will enable them to do.
From these facts—that many of the manufactories in England had but a short career; and that the work produced, in many cases, had no marks, or had a great variety of marks; that in some cases but little work was made, and that of that little much has disappeared—a surprising interest has come to be attached to that which remains; and in some cases surprising prices have been paid for it, and are now paid.