Porcelain

by Edward Dillon

The outturn of the kilns, like that of Chelsea, was sold periodically by auction, but the sales took place in the city for the most part, and the principal warehouse was in Cornhill. Though so difficult to identify nowadays, a large quantity of porcelain must have been produced by the Bow factory during the thirty years of its independent existence. Like its rival at Chelsea, the works had many ups and downs, and Crowther, the proprietor, became bankrupt in 1763. Compared with Chelsea, however, the bulk of the ware produced was no doubt of a common and cheap kind. Sprimont, in his ‘Case of the Undertaker,’ says somewhat contemptuously, ‘The chief endeavours at Bow have been towards making a more ordinary ware for common use.’ This is, of course, the dictum of a rival, but the Bow firm, in their advertisements, only claim to provide ‘china suitable for gentlemen’s kitchens, for private families and taverns.’

There has been the widest difference of opinion as to the actual specimens of porcelain that may with certainty be classed as the produce of the kilns at Bow. The earliest dated pieces are of a very modest kind—certain little cylindrical ink-pots. There is one in the collection formerly at Jermyn Street, with the inscription ‘Made at New Canton, 1751’; another in a private collection is dated a year earlier. The execution is rough, and the hastily coloured decoration of flowers is in the Japanese style. Some little time after this, in 1753, we find proof that the kilns were turning out much more ware than the proprietor could find painters to decorate.[226] They advertise in a Birmingham newspaper for ‘painters in the blue and white potting way and enamelers in china-ware’; also for ‘painters brought up in the Snuff-box way, Japanning, Fan-painting, etc.’ They are at the same time in search of persons ‘who can model small figures in clay neatly.’ Such advertisements seem to come from a commercial house with a large but perhaps irregular outturn. Sprimont would probably have exercised more care in the selection of his artists.

There is a famous punch-bowl in the British Museum which is above all the pièce justificative of the Bow porcelain works. On the inside of the cover of the box in which it is preserved is a long inscription, signed at the foot by T. Craft, and with the date 1790.[227] Thomas Craft, formerly an enamel-painter at Bow, was probably at that time a very old man. This bowl, he tells us, was made at Bow about 1760, and painted by him ‘in what we used to call the old Japan taste, a taste at that time much esteemed by the then Duke of Argyle.’ This is interesting. Craft refers probably to the so-called ‘partridge and wheatsheaf’ style, and the duke was doubtless a collector of this ware, like his contemporaries at Chantilly and the Palais Royal. But the decoration of this bowl has unfortunately nothing Japanese about it, except to some degree in the colour of the enamels employed. The heavy wreaths made up of minute flowers, upon which Mr. Craft tells us that he expended two dwts. of gold and about a fortnight of his time, take their inspiration rather from Meissen. (Compare the wreaths, [Pl. xlv]. 2.) The works, he continues, which employed ninety painters and about two hundred turners, throwers, etc.,[228] had now, in 1790, ‘like Shakespeare’s cloud-capt towers, etc.,’ shared the fate of ‘the famous cities of Troy, Carthage, etc.’ The site was occupied by a manufactory of turpentine and some small tenements. Mr. Craft, however, tells us that he never used this punch-bowl but in particular respect of his company, and he hopes that those to whom it may pass may be equally abstemious. It is at present in the charge of the trustees of the British Museum.

Many of the more elaborate figures and highly finished vases classed as ‘Bow’ in the Schreiber collection at South Kensington are now regarded by most specialists as the production, some of the Derby works, and others of the Chelsea and even the Worcester kilns. In view of the uncertainty and difference of opinion about the ware that is to be attributed to Bow, it is important to note the physical qualities of undoubted specimens. Professor Church lays stress upon the

PLATE XLV. 1—CHELSEA, COLOURED ENAMELS
2—BOW, COLOURED ENAMELS

general thickness of the ware, the remarkable translucency of the thinner parts, and upon the fact that the transmitted light is of a somewhat yellowish tint, not greenish, as in the Worcester porcelain. The glaze, though nearly white, is of a pale straw colour, and it tends to accumulate round the reliefs; it contains much lead, and is liable to become iridescent and discoloured (English Porcelain, p. 31). I would add that a majority of the undoubted examples—I rely especially upon those collected by the late Sir A. W. Franks, now in the British Museum—are distinguished by a certain dirty and speckled appearance of the surface of the glaze. I think that the Bow china has been less influenced than other of our wares by French and German examples. Apart from the Oriental decoration of some of the earlier pieces, it is on the whole a very English ware.

The process of transfer-printing, which had been first applied to china by Sadler of Liverpool about the year 1750, and which had been in use at perhaps as early a date on the enamels of Battersea, where Hancock was working at this time, was employed a few years later at Bow.[229] A preliminary outline was sometimes printed under the glaze, and this subsequently enlivened by enamel colours laid on by hand, as we see on some barbarously painted dishes with Chinese subjects in the British Museum. This transfer-printing is an essentially English process: it has since been carried round the world in the wake of our Staffordshire pottery, and the process has even been applied to porcelain in Japan. To the general adoption of this mechanical process, more than to any other cause, we may attribute the dying out of the school of artist-craftsmen who painted on china, and the extinction of all feeling for the decorative value of the designs applied to the ware.

I would call attention to some small figures in the collection formerly in the Geological Museum. These little statuettes are in a white glazed ware of a slightly greenish tint, and they are attributed to Bow. The ‘Draped Warrior’ and the ‘Seated Nuns’ appear to be taken from models of a considerably earlier period, and their artistic merit is undeniable.