John Bacon, the fashionable sculptor of George iii.’s time, is said to have found employment, when young, both as a modeller and painter of porcelain. He was certainly apprenticed in 1755 to a Mr. Crispe of Bow Churchyard, the proprietor of some pottery-works at Lambeth, and he may very likely have worked for Crowther, at Bow, after the expiration of his apprenticeship.
A dagger or sword with one or more dots near the hilt, associated with an anchor, is the mark especially characteristic of the ware made at Bow ([Pl. e]. 71), but much porcelain attributed to this factory carries no mark. A monogram formed of the letters T and F found on some early ware is perhaps to be referred to Thomas Frye, but the Worcester factory also used this mark ([Pl. e]. 72).
Longton Hall.—It has lately been recognised that porcelain was made in the Staffordshire potteries, probably as early as the middle of the century.[230] This was at Longton Hall, in the borough of Stoke-upon-Trent. From an advertisement in a Birmingham paper (July 27, 1752) we learn that W. Littler and Co. were ready to supply ‘a great variety of ornamental porcelain in the most fashionable and genteel taste.’ It was Mr. Nightingale, I think, who first traced certain pieces of china, marked with two L’s crossed ([Pl. e]. 81), to Littler’s factory. This porcelain had previously been attributed to Bow. The Longton Hall ware has no claim to any artistic merit. A crude blue is the prevailing ground colour, and the contorted shapes copy rudely the rococo of Sprimont’s Chelsea ware. The mouldings on the dishes and plates often take the form of leaves. Some of this porcelain is exceptionally thin compared with other English wares of this comparatively early period. The flower-painting on the reserved panels of the plates should, however, be noticed. The carefully executed bunches of roses, somewhat realistically treated, are perhaps the earliest specimens of a style very prevalent at a later time in England, one which found its most famous exponent in Billingsley’s work at Nantgarw and elsewhere. William Duesbury, a native of the district, was working at Longton Hall early in the fifties as a painter in enamel. Nothing is known of this factory after the year 1758.[231] There is some reason to believe that it fell into the hands of Duesbury, but this is a disputed question. Professor Church has analysed several specimens of the Longton Hall china. It contains no bone-ash, and is in composition very close to the early Chelsea ware.
CHAPTER XXI
ENGLISH PORCELAIN—(continued).
THE SOFT PASTE OF DERBY, WORCESTER, CAUGHLEY, COALPORT, SWANSEA, NANTGARW, LOWESTOFT, LIVERPOOL, PINXTON, ROCKINGHAM, CHURCH GRESLEY, SPODE, AND BELLEEK.
DERBY.—Porcelain of some kind was probably made at Derby not much later than the date of the first establishment of Frye’s works at Bow. Mr. Bemrose quotes entries from the work-book of Duesbury, which show that during the years 1751-53 he was busy enamelling the products not only of the ‘Chellsea and Bogh’ kilns, but that, although resident in London, he received work from Derby also. Indeed the price, eight shillings, that he got for enamelling ‘one pair of Darby figars large,’ is higher than his usual charge for painting the Chelsea statuettes (Bow, Chelsea, and Derby Porcelain).[232]
William Duesbury was a Staffordshire man. As early as the year 1742, when he was only seventeen, he was working in London as an enameller for weekly wages. This we know from his work-book, which has been preserved. It would be interesting to know what it was that he enamelled at this early date. From the same book we learn that in the years 1751-53 he was in London decorating china figures for the most part. These he distinguishes as Bow, or Bogh, Chellsea, Darby, and Staffordshire. In 1752 he paid a bill of £6, 19s. for colours, although at that time little gold was used by him. Among other entries in his work-book at this period we find the following note: ‘How to color the group, a gentleman Busing a Lady—gentlm a gold trimd cote, a pink wastcot crimson and trimd with gold and black breeches and socs, the lade a flourd sack with yellow robings, a black stomegar, her hare black, his wig powdrd.’ Each piece that he coloured is carefully noted, and the price that he obtained given. For instance, ‘pair of le Dresden figars,’ ‘Chellsea Nurs,’ ‘a pair of Baccosses,’ ‘a hartychoake.’[233] We have already referred to Duesbury’s connection with Littler’s works,—we may note that his father was living at Longton Hall at this time.
In December 1756 there was a sale in London, by order of the ‘Derby Porcelain Manufactory,’ of figures, services, etc., ‘after the finest Dresden models.’ For some time the ‘Derby China Company’ sold their goods through their factor at ‘Oliver Cromwell’s Drawing-Room’ near the Admiralty. It would seem that in 1756 Duesbury entered into some kind of partnership, at Derby, with Heath and Planché, the first a banker and proprietor of pottery-works at Cockpit Hill, and the latter a ‘china-maker,’ of whom various more or less apocryphal stories are told. All we can safely say is that Planché had probably been working for some time at Derby as a modeller of figures.
In the year 1758 the Derby works were enlarged and the number of workmen doubled, and this change has been coupled with the closing of Littler’s factory at Longton Hall about the same time. But from this date to the year 1769, all that we know of the Derby factory is derived from a few advertisements in London papers. It is indeed a very remarkable fact that, in spite of the most persevering researches—for how thoroughly the ground has been gleaned we can judge by looking through the elaborate works of Haslem, Bemrose, and the late Mr. Nightingale—we can hardly point to a single specimen of porcelain made at Derby before the year 1770, nor do we know of any mark that can be assigned to an earlier period than this. Can it be that up to this time the works were chiefly occupied in copying the wares, and perhaps the marks, not only of Dresden, but also of Chelsea and Bow?
When the Chelsea factory and its contents were sold in 1769, it was Duesbury, and not the Derby China Company, who was the purchaser. After the year 1775, when the Bow works were also purchased, he had, with the exception of the Worcester manufactory, practically no rival in the field.
We may take the year 1770 as the turning-point in the history of English porcelain. In France, by this time, the rococo of Louis xv.’s reign was already giving way to the simpler, and in part more classical, forms that distinguish the next reign, for it is common knowledge that the style known as Louis xvi. came into vogue several years before the accession of that king. In England the change can be best traced in the work of the silversmith, seeing that in such work there can be no uncertainty as to the date. Already, before the end of the sixties, we find in the silver plate then made outlines formed of simple curves and even straight lines replacing the troubled rococo scrolls, and by the year 1770 the new classical forms have carried the whole field. And in like manner the china made by Duesbury, both at Chelsea and Derby, follows the new fashion.