It appears from these archives that the cost of building and opening the factory of Alcora amounted to about £10,000. The works were placed beneath the supervision of Don Joaquín Joseph de Sayas, at the same time that a Frenchman named Ollery was engaged at a good salary and brought from Moustiers to act as principal draughtsman. A couple of years later Count Aranda paid Ollery the high compliment of saying that “the fine and numerous models which he has designed, have contributed to make my manufacture the first in Spain.” He seems to have retired in 1737, when the Count rewarded him with a yearly pension of five hundred francs besides the amount of his salary, “for his especial zeal in the improvement of the manufactory, and his great skill in directing the construction of every kind of work.” Riaño adds that from this date until the manufacture of porcelain in 1764, only Spanish artists worked at Alcora.
The products of this factory continued to improve, and reached, in course of time, a yearly total of about three hundred thousand objects. The ordinances, which are dated between 1732 and 1733, tell us that “in these works of ours no pottery should be made except the very finest, similar to the Chinese, and of as fine an earth. The models and wheels should be perfect, the drawing first-rate, the varnish and colours excellent, and the pottery light and of the highest quality, for it is our express wish that the best pottery should only be distinguished from that of an inferior kind by the greater or less amount of painting which covers it.”
Not less interesting are certain communications, copied by Riaño, which passed in 1746 between the Spanish Tribunal of Commerce and the Count of Aranda, in which it is stated that “the perfection of the earthenware of Alcora consists in the excellent models which have been made by competent foreign artists, as well as in the quality of the earth and the recipes brought at great cost from abroad.” We learn from the same document that “from the earliest period of the manufacture, pyramids with figures of children, holding garlands of flowers and baskets of fruits on their heads, were made with great perfection; also brackets, centre and three-cornered tables, large objects, some as large as five feet high, to be placed upon them, chandeliers, cornucopias, statues of different kinds, and animals of different sorts and sizes. The entire ornamentation of a room has also been made here; the work is so perfect that nothing in Spain, France, Italy, or Holland could equal it in merit.”
It is not necessary to follow in close detail all the modifications and vicissitudes (extending over quite a hundred years) which affected the Alcora factory. I therefore only take some general notices from Riaño. In 1750 Count Aranda transferred the works to a private company, which remained in possession of them until 1766. In 1741 a Frenchman named François Haly was engaged for ten years, and with a yearly salary of rather more than a thousand francs, under the following conditions:—
“That the travelling expenses of his wife and children should be given him, and that his salary should be paid as soon as he made before the Director and two competent judges the different kinds of porcelain which he had undertaken to make.” Haly agreed to surrender his recipes, and it was promised him that he should have two modellers and one painter working by his side, and that if in one year his porcelain were satisfactory, the Count would make him a present of a thousand tornoises.[100]
Porcelain was first produced at Alcora towards the middle of the eighteenth century. A contract was drawn up on March 24th, 1764, with a German called John Christian Knipfer, who had already worked there in the pottery section. By the original agreement, which exists in the archives, we find he was to prepare works of “porcelain and painting similar to those made at Dresden, during a period of six years, under the following conditions:—
“That the said Knipfer obliges himself to make and teach the apprentices the composition and perfection of porcelain paste, its varnishes, and colours, and whatever he may know at the present time, or discover during this period of six years; he is not to prevent the Director of the Works from being present at all the essays made.
“The said Knipfer offers to make and varnish porcelain, and to employ gold and silver in its decoration, and in that of the ordinary wares; likewise the colours of crimson, purple, violet, blues of different shades, yellow, greens, browns, reds, and black.
“That Knipfer will give up an account of his secrets, and the management and manner of using them, in order that in all times the truth of what he has asserted may be verified.”
