After 1763 Sprimont’s factory at Chelsea was only working at irregular intervals. Some time later, about 1768, many of the enamel-painters migrated to Worcester, where capable artists seem to have been in great demand. It is usual to attribute to this migration a new scheme of decoration that came into vogue at Worcester in the seventies. This was the period of the vases with deep blue grounds and panels brilliantly painted with flowers and bright-plumaged tropical birds. The bleu du roi ground (we must remember that, like the similar grounds at Chelsea and Longport, this pigment was painted sous couverte) is often covered with the salmon-scales in a deeper tint so characteristic of the period; at other times it is replaced by a poudré blue. The hand of the Chelsea artist is to be recognised in the decoration of the panels, but the vases are generally of simple contours, often octagonal and, on the whole, following Chinese shapes. It is this richly decorated ware, produced especially between 1770 and 1780, which now commands such extravagant prices in the London market.
On the other hand, the new classical forms already in favour at Derby and in France were not as yet adopted at Worcester—they came in later, and then in a more debased form. In fact, the special mark of this, the finest period in these works, is the application of a rich style of painting that we generally associate with rococo shapes, to vases which otherwise retain the form and decoration of their Chinese prototypes. Somewhat later, from Sèvres, no doubt, came the canary yellow, generally poor in tone and of uneven strength. The simple floral wreaths of the Louis xvi. period are here represented by the pretty ‘trellis’ design, green festoons hanging from reddish poles ([Pl. xlvi].).
Much of the Worcester porcelain was from an early time decorated in London. In 1768 we find Mr. J. Giles (no doubt the ‘Mr. Gyles of Kentish Town’ to whose kiln Thomas Craft took his famous punch-bowl to be ‘burnt’ at a charge of 3s.) described in an advertisement as ‘china and enamel painter, proprietor of the Worcester Porcelain Warehouse, up one pair of stairs in Cockspur Street.’ Here the nobility and gentry may find ‘articles useful and ornamental curiously painted in the Dresden, Chelsea, and Chinese taste.’
At a later time the Baxter family occupied much the same position as Giles. The elder Baxter had
PLATE XLVI. WORCESTER
workshops at Goldsmith Street, Gough Square,[241] and here white porcelain from many sources was decorated. There is a curious water-colour drawing, representing the interior of this workshop, at South Kensington. It is the work of the younger Baxter, famous in his day as a painter on porcelain. The pale, anæmic faces of the artists—one of them wears a large pair of spectacles—crouching over their work in a narrow, crowded room, may be taken as evidence that this occupation was injurious both to the eyesight and to the general health ([Pl. xlvii].).
To return to the general history of the Worcester factory. In 1770 we hear of a strike among the painters, who were alarmed at the spread of the underglaze printing process. The movement was not unconnected, probably, with the introduction of new blood from Chelsea. In 1772 there was a general shuffling-up and reorganisation of the company, with the result that Dr. Wall and the two Davises, father and son, finally gained possession of nearly all the shares. But the doctor died in 1776, and seven years later the whole concern was sold to Mr. Flight, a London jeweller, who had previously acted as agent for the company. At the same time Chamberlain, an original apprentice, and a man who had taken a leading part of late in the artistic management, seceded from the company, and, with his son, set up an independent manufactory.
After the visit of George iii. to the works in 1788, the factory became ‘Royal,’ and this is, perhaps, the nearest approach to a royal patronage that we can find in the history of English porcelain. In time the Chamberlain offshoot came to flourish more than the original stock, and finally, in 1840, the older firm, then known as ‘Flight and Barr,’ was absorbed by it. Towards the end of the eighteenth century many magnificent services of china were made for the royal family, painted with finished pictures in the style admired at the time. The porcelain was again ‘made to speak.’ In answer to the Napoleonic victories figured on the ware of Sèvres, we in England painted naval emblems and portraits of Lord Nelson on our plates and dishes.