4. The early commercial period. The business firms at Derby and Worcester almost monopolise the market. Somewhat later the factories in the Severn valley form a link with the next period.
5. The Staffordshire commercial period, equally commercial and essentially eclectic. Everything is copied, and there is a constant tendency to hark back to older types.
It is possible that some such historical arrangement, combined with a division according to types of decoration, might be made the basis of an account of English porcelain; but it will be a safer course to follow the usual topographical division, treating the different factories more or less in the order of the date of their foundation.
Chelsea.—The year 1745 is the earliest date to which any piece of Chelsea ware can with certainty be assigned. The factory ceased to exist as an independent seat of manufacture before 1770. In this short interval there were apparently some years during which very little china was made. It is thus essentially an early ware, and Horace Walpole in his catalogue already speaks of ‘old Chelsea.’
We know absolutely nothing about the origin of the works. The Duke of Buckingham, in the time of Charles ii., is said to have been interested in some glass-works in this neighbourhood, and to have brought over workmen from Venice. The duke’s glass-houses were, however, more probably at Lambeth. At any rate, at that time, the ‘cones,’ as the glass-houses were called, appear to have been regarded as places suitable equally for the making of glass or the firing of pottery—so at least I glean from the terms of an advertisement in which some of these ‘cones’ are offered for sale. The origin of the well-known anchor-mark of Chelsea has been sought in Venice, but, as far as porcelain is concerned, it was probably in use at Chelsea at an earlier date than in the latter town.
Our knowledge of the existence of a factory at Chelsea before 1749 rests on the survival of two little cream-jugs of white ware moulded in the so-called ‘goat and bee’ pattern. Like some other pieces to which an early date may be assigned, these little jugs bear as a mark a rough triangle scratched in the paste ([Pl. e]. 68), but they stand alone in the fact that beneath the triangle has been added, before baking, in a scrawly hand, ‘Chelsea, 1745.’[210] Thanks to them we are able, upon material evidence, to put back the origin of English porcelain for five years at least.[211]
In the year 1747, we are told in the London Tradesman, that at a house at Greenwich, and at another at Chelsea, the undertakers had been for some time trying to imitate the porcelain of China and Dresden, and in the same year a number of Staffordshire potters migrated to London to find work in the Chelsea factory (Shaw’s Rise and Progress of the Staffordshire Potteries). In a London paper of December 1749 there is an advertisement of the sale of a freehold messuage in ‘Great China Row, Chelsea.’ This was no mere misprint—China for Cheyne—(the two words were pronounced alike at that time), for we come across the same spelling in more than one instance at a later date.[212] There is a real confusion of the two names, arising probably from the interest taken in the porcelain factory lately established in the neighbourhood; and this very confusion is good evidence of the extent to which the china question was occupying people’s minds at the time.
Two months later, in January 1750, we hear for the first time of Mr. Charles Gouyn, but he is already, at that date, the late proprietor and chief manager of the ‘Chelsea House.’ Of this Gouyn, presumably the founder of the works, we know nothing. He was probably of French or Belgian origin.[213] Of Gouyn’s successor, Nicholas Sprimont, we know something more. Like his contemporary Duplessis, at Sèvres, he was a silversmith, working at one time in Soho. Sprimont entered his name at Goldsmith Hall in 1742, and his mark is found on a pair of silver dishes ornamented with shells and corals now at Windsor.
For twenty years (1749-69) the factory at Chelsea was dependent upon Sprimont’s efforts. He was financier, director, and designer. When he was ill the kilns were not lighted. When finally, in 1764, he had to go in search of health to ‘the German Spau,’ the stock and plant were offered for sale. At an early period—soon after 1753, it would seem, but possibly somewhat later—he appealed to the Government against the connivance of the custom-house officials at the smuggling in of Dresden china. In this ‘Case of the Undertaker of the Chelsea Manufacture of Porcelain,’ Sprimont points out that ‘as the law stands, painted Earthenware[214] other than that from India is not enterable at the Custom House, otherwise than for private use.’ ‘The regulation,’ says Sprimont, ‘is, however, evaded, especially by a certain foreign minister whose official residence has become a warehouse for this commerce. What chance had a private person in a match with a crowned head?’
From this ‘Case’ we learn that no porcelain or other ware, apart from the importations of the East India Company, was allowed to enter the country, but that an exception was made in the case of plain white ware suitable for subsequent decoration in England.[215] Private individuals, however, might import a certain amount of European porcelain for their own use on payment of a small duty. ‘This concession,’ says Sprimont, ‘was greatly abused.’ Who, however, is the ‘crowned head’ who is so anxious to push the sale of his own goods in the English market? The Elector of Saxony, it is usually said; but if we could put the date of the ‘undertaker’s case’ a few years later, between 1759 and 1761 (there are, I allow, some difficulties in so doing), this charge would fit in well with the efforts of Frederick the Great to convert the stock of porcelain he found at Meissen into the much-needed cash.[216]