As to the marks used at Chelsea, of the early incised triangle, which was formerly ascribed to Bow, we have already spoken. The anchor in relief on a raised oval cartouche ([Pl. e]. 69) is found on relatively early ware; it is associated with a waxy, translucent paste, and a simple decoration without gilding. The mark, par excellence, of Chelsea is the red anchor ([Pl. e]. 70), but on richly decorated pieces, and especially those with much gilding, the anchor is often inscribed in gold.
Bow.—From the beginning of the eighteenth century to the year 1744 there is no trace of the issue of any English patent relating to the manufacture of porcelain. In the latter year, however, a specification was registered according to which Edward Heylyn, of the parish of Bow, merchant, and Thomas Frye, of the parish of West Ham, painter, professed to make porcelain, by mixing with ‘an earth the produce of the Cherokee nation in America, called by the natives Unaker,’ a glass composed of flint and potash. This unaker, no doubt a kind of kaolin (we are told that the sand and mica had to be carefully washed away), was much talked of at this time (especially in Quaker circles), and its use preceded by some years that of the Cornish china-clay.
Possibly something resembling porcelain was made at Bow for a short time with these incongruous materials; but in the winter of 1748-49 a second patent
Plate XLIV.
Chelsea. Coloured enamels.
was taken out, this time by Frye alone, ‘for a new method of making a certain ware which is not inferior in beauty and fineness, and is rather superior in strength than the earthenware that is brought from the East Indies, and is commonly known by the name of China, Japan, or porcelain ware.’ In the description of the materials employed under the vague denomination of ‘a virgin earth’ produced by the calcination, grinding, and washing of certain animals, vegetables, and fossils, we probably have, as Professor Church has pointed out, the first mention of bone-ash as a material for porcelain. According to the specification, the paste should contain four-ninths by weight of the ‘virgin earth,’ and taking this to mean bone-ash, this proportion corresponds most closely with the amount of phosphate of lime found by Professor Church in some of the fragments from the site of the works which we shall describe directly. Frye’s glaze was to be compounded from a mixture of red lead, saltpetre and sand, with the addition of a small quantity of smalt, to correct the yellow colour of the paste.[224]
Thomas Frye was an artist of some standing who, towards the close of his life, ‘scraped’ some mezzotints still valued by collectors. He died in 1762, and in his epitaph it is claimed for him that he was ‘the inventor and first manufacturer of porcelain in England.’ The works of which Frye was the manager before the failure of his health in 1759 were situated close to the high road just beyond the bridge over the river Lea. Close by, in 1868, when making some excavations for a drain in the grounds of a match-factory, a number of fragments of porcelain were found, among them pieces of plain white with prunus ‘sprigs’ in relief, and others poorly decorated with under-glaze blue. Some of these fragments were evidently ‘wasters.’ With them were found some broken ‘seggars,’ and, what is still more interesting, a circular cake of frit, so that the site of the kilns must have been near at hand.[225]
The model of the Bow factory, we are told, was taken from that at Canton, in China. It would be interesting to know to what building the reference is made, for it is doubtful whether porcelain was ever made at Canton. In any case, the name given to the factory, ‘The New Canton Works,’ is interesting. Here in the east of London, one was then, as now, perceptibly nearer to China and the East Indies than at Chelsea. The river and the docks are at hand, and there is indeed only one stage—a long one, it is true—between us and Canton. So at Bow we find the Oriental decoration more prevalent and surviving longer than elsewhere.