Porcelain

by Edward Dillon

Spain

Buen Retiro.—During the sixteenth century we have frequent references to the importation of Oriental porcelain into the Peninsula—the white ware of Fukien is said to have been above all prized. In the seventeenth century we find Portuguese travelling merchants selling porcelain at the fair of St. Germain, and we hear that their stalls were visited by people of quality from Paris. (Cf. [p. 230].)

But this ware of the Far East has left little or no mark upon the fayence or porcelain made in Spain. In the former, at least, the influence of the nearer Saracenic East has always remained predominant.[205] The porcelain fever that raged at times in the rest of Europe seems to have left Spain untouched until the advent of the half-French, half-Italian king in 1759. Charles iii., who abandoned his Neapolitan throne in that year to succeed his brother as King of Spain, was on the whole the best of the many descendants of Louis xiv. who ruled in France, Spain, and Italy in the eighteenth century. We have seen that he was an enthusiastic potter, and his first care, even before leaving Naples, was to see to the transhipping to Spain of practically the whole of the staff, to say nothing of the moulds and other appliances in use at the Capo di Monte factory. Don Juan Riaño, in his Handbook of Spanish Arts, gives the names of nineteen modellers and fourteen painters who sailed for Alicante in a vessel specially chartered for this purpose. Among these Italian emigrants two names are worthy of mention—Buonicelli—he and his son after him superintended the new works till the end of the century—and Gricci (there were three men of this name among the modellers), the designer of the famous porcelain chamber at Aranjuez.

The new factory, known as La China, was erected in the garden of the Buen Retiro, a palace in the suburbs of Madrid. Here for the next thirty years, that is until the death of Charles iii. in 1788, supported by a large yearly grant, and surrounded by the strictest secrecy, was made the porcelain destined for the decoration of the royal palaces and for presentation to other courts. Only in the time of Joseph, Napoleon’s brother, and of Ferdinand vii., was the ware from the royal works allowed to come into the market, and this was at a period of decline. The Buen Retiro gardens were the scene of desperate fighting between the English and the French in the year 1812, during which the porcelain works were completely destroyed.

We hear, at the commencement, of quarrels between the Spanish and Italian workmen, and of breakdowns in the kilns. But Charles and his director, Buonicelli, must soon have surmounted the preliminary difficulties, for already, during the years 1763 to 1765 (as we learn from an inscription on one of the slabs), Giuseppe Gricci was occupied in decorating the porcelain chamber, the famous Gabineto of the palace at Aranjuez, which surpassed in magnificence the earlier room of the same description at Portici. The large plaques which surround this chamber are decorated with groups of Japanese figures in high relief, carefully modelled and painted. Between these plaques rise tall looking-glasses brought from the king’s new glass-works at La Granja, and the porcelain frames of these mirrors are elaborately decorated with fruits and flowers. There is another of these porcelain cabinets in the Royal Palace at Madrid; this time the plaques are ornamented with children in high relief. Here and in the other Spanish palaces, at Aranjuez, at La Granja, and at the Escurial, may still be seen vases of porcelain from Buen Retiro, some of them six or seven feet in height. These vases are often set in gilt bronze mountings and filled with branches of porcelain flowers.

Among the specimens of Spanish porcelain that we see in English collections, it is the plain white ware that interests us most. This is of a very beautiful warm tint, and the vases are surrounded by amorini in full relief among flowers, or again by sea-shells modelled from nature, as in the case of the Capo di Monte ware. But many other things were made—imitations of Wedgwood, for example, white relief on a dull blue ground.

In its last days the factory fell under French influence, and an attempt was made to imitate the hard paste of Sèvres with the aid of native clays. It would seem that some of the paste made at an earlier time was of a hybrid nature, containing magnesia, like that of Vinovo.

The factory was re-established by Ferdinand vii. after his restoration, at the Moncloa, near Madrid, but with little success. Close at hand, at La Florida, near the well-known Paseo, an attempt has been lately made to revive the works. Zuluaga, the famous metal-worker, has interested himself in these new works, but the ware made is of little interest.

The fleur-de-lis of the Bourbons, generally painted in blue under the glaze, is the only mark that need be mentioned; it is probable that this mark was already in use at Naples ([Pl. d]. 67).

At Alcora, in the province of Valencia, the Conde d’Aranda had established an important factory of artistic fayence as early as the year 1725. Aranda played no small part in the short-lived revival of prosperity in Spain that followed the accession of Charles iii. In 1764 we find him sending to Dresden for an arcanist, and in 1774 he obtained the services of a French expert, one Martin, from Sèvres. Each in his turn covenanted with the count to make true porcelain, and we are told that he sent specimens of his ware to his friend Voltaire at Ferney. Don Juan Riaño gives a full account of this factory, but there do not seem to be any specimens of Aranda’s wares in English collections that are anything better than a fine fayence.