PLATE XXX. MEDICI, BLUE AND WHITE
In France,[148] Claude Reverend, in 1664, is authorised to ‘contrefaire la porcelaine à la façon des Indes.’ A more serious interest attaches to the letters-patent granted in 1673 to Louis Poterat of Rouen. This Poterat was a man of some position; he belonged to a family that had long been connected with the manufacture of enamelled fayence at St. Sever, near Rouen. In the diploma of 1673 facilities are granted him by the king for making vessels of porcelain similar to those of China by means of the secret process that he had discovered for manufacturing ‘la véritable porcelaine de la Chine.’ There exist certain little pieces of soft-paste porcelain, sparely decorated with arabesques and lambrequins in blue sous couverte, in the style of Louis xiv., and marked with the letters A.P. surmounted by a small star.[149] These are now generally classed as Rouen ware of the time of Poterat; in that case, we must see in them the earliest specimens of the French family of porcelaines tendres. We have seen specimens at Sèvres and at Dresden, in both cases little cylindrical boxes divided into compartments. A similarly decorated cup, of very translucent ware, in the Fitzhenry collection, is also attributed to Rouen.
There were probably at this time and later many others, arcanistes or practical potters, working at the problem in France. M. Vogt quotes, from the Comptes des Bâtiments du Roi for 1682, two singular payments for the transport of ‘terre de porcelaine’ from Le Havre to Rouen and thence to Paris. This porcelain earth had, it is stated, been previously shipped to Civita Vecchia. It has been suggested that this might refer to a cargo of kaolin sent from the East (La Porcelaine, p. 34).
In 1695 the king granted to the Chicoineau family the privilege of making porcelain, by means of a secret process, reserving only the right previously granted to Poterat of Rouen.
With the establishment, however, of the Saint-Cloud kilns we pass out of the stage of tentative experiment, and the porcelain of Saint-Cloud forms the proper introduction to the soft-paste wares of France.
Early Experiments in England.—The potters art was at a very low ebb in England in the seventeenth century. The Dutch with their Delft ware had taken up a position comparable to that held by our Staffordshire potters a century and a half later. They supplied us for many years with the ordinary crockery in use among the middle classes (indeed, in parts of Ireland such ware is still known as ‘delf’). From the scattered local potteries were produced only the roughest kinds of earthenware. But in this rude ware we see at times a certain barbaric, almost Oriental feeling for colour and decoration, giving more promise of artistic possibilities than we can find in the tame imitative work of the eighteenth century porcelain maker.
Quite early in the seventeenth century, however, certainly by the time of Charles i., pottery works were established by the banks of the Thames at Lambeth and elsewhere, where successful imitations of Delft were made, probably with the assistance of Dutch workmen. Not far off, at Fulham, Dr. John Dwight experimented upon various clays and glazes, in the reign of Charles ii. His is the earliest name that occurs in the history of English ceramics. In the letters-patent granted to him in 1671, he claims that ‘at his own proper costs and charges he hath invented and set up at Fulham ... several new manufactories.’ Not only was he prepared to deal with ‘the misterie of the stoneware vulgarly called Cologne ware,’ but he also lays claim to ‘the mysterie of transparent earthenware, commonly knowne by the name of porcelaine or china, and Persian ware.’ This claim is made even more definitely by his friend Dr. Plot, in the History of Oxfordshire, which he published in 1677. Dr. Dwight, he tells us, ‘hath found ways to make an earth white and transparent as porcelane, and not distinguishable from it by the eye or by experiments which have been purposely made to try wherein they disagree.’
We may compare this claim with the similar statements made about the same time in the petitions of Poterat and others. In neither case is there any sign of an acquaintance with the Chinese materials. In France the aim was to make something that should combine the properties of earthenware and glass; while in the case of Dr. Dwight’s ware, hardness and infusibility were the points sought for.