In the Museo Arqueologico at Madrid there is a large collection of porcelain and fayence from Buen Retiro, La Moncloa, Alcora, and Talavera.
Portugal.—Some hard-paste porcelain was made at Lisbon before the year 1775, and at Vista Alegre, near Oporto, the factory started about 1790 is still carried on. Certain medallions of biscuit porcelain, in the style of Wedgwood, have found their way into the Schreiber and Franks collections. To judge from an inscription on a minute plaque suitable for setting in a ring, in the latter collection, these medallions were made at the Royal Arsenal at Lisbon in 1792.
CHAPTER XX
ENGLISH PORCELAIN
INTRODUCTION—THE SOFT-PASTE PORCELAIN OF CHELSEA AND BOW
IN spite of the considerable literature that has sprung up upon the subject, we know little of the early history of English soft-paste porcelain.
We have already spoken of the experiments made by Dr. Dwight in the seventeenth century. Dr. Lister, writing in 1699 (see above, [p. 282]), shows a remarkable acquaintance with the technical qualities of various kinds of porcelain: he speaks of ‘the inward Substance and Matter of the Pots’ made at Saint-Cloud as the very same as that of the Chinese, ‘hard and fine as Marble, and the self-same grain on this side vitrification. Further, the transparency of the Pots the very same.’ He had expected that at best they ‘might have arrived at the Gomron ware, which is indeed little else but a total vitrification.’[206] The man who wrote this must have been thoroughly acquainted with the physical qualities of porcelain; he must already have made some study of the subject. And yet not only at that time, but for the next forty-five years, there is a total absence of any evidence, documentary or practical, that porcelain was made anywhere in England.[207]
Meantime new porcelain works were springing up in various parts of Germany, and in France the factories of Saint-Cloud and Chantilly had long been at work. It is indeed from a French document that we get our first hint as to the existence of porcelain works in England before the year 1745. In an ‘arrest du Conseil d’État du Roy’ of that year, by which Charles Adam is authorised to establish a porcelain factory at Vincennes, a note of alarm is sounded. ‘A new establishment that has lately been founded in England for the manufacture of porcelain, which appears by the nature of its composition more beautiful than that of Saxony,’ will probably, so the document states, lead to the new English ware replacing that of French origin (Marryat, p. 371).
For one reason or another there appears to have been a great outburst of interest in porcelain about the year 1745. The works at Bow were probably started at that time. There are in existence dated pieces of that year which were almost certainly made at Chelsea, and these were no first efforts. As early as this, some porcelain figures may possibly have been made at Derby,[208] so that we may perhaps take the ten years preceding 1750 as the period during which the industry was obscurely passing through its experimental stage. After this time, those who had been first in the field reaped a good harvest, for during the next decade the china mania was at its height, and afforded much material for the satirical and comic writers of the day.
To sum up the history of English porcelain in the eighteenth century, we may take it that about the year 1740 the first attempts were made to imitate the various kinds of Oriental and Continental porcelain that were every year coming more and more into use; that by the year 1750 several factories were at work; and finally, that by 1780 the best had already been accomplished, and the decline had already begun.
Taken as a whole, our English porcelain, whether of soft or hard paste, shows little originality. From the point of view of design and decoration we may divide the ware made during the eighteenth century into two schools:—