“Experience must determine the best form and way of using this kiln. ’Tis the only desideratum wanting to the bringing of the manufacture of porcelain, equal to any in the world, to perfection in England.
“Caulin pipeclay and a coarse unvitrifiable sand make excellent safeguards.”
The experiments on the Cornish materials having been perfectly successful, Cookworthy established himself as a china manufacturer at Plymouth. The works were at Coxside, at the extreme angle which juts into the water at Sutton Pool. Some parts of the buildings still exist, and are used as a shipwright’s yard. They are still known by the name of the “China House,” and it is really pleasant to find that a memory of these once celebrated works is yet retained on the spot where they were carried on. It is strange, however, to think that the same building which was used for the fabricating of the finest and most delicate and fragile articles, should now be used for the constructing of huge seaworthy vessels, which can withstand the force of the waves, and bear heavy burthens in safety across the seas, whether in calm or storm.
In these works Cookworthy prosecuted his new art with great success, and was soon enabled to enter the market with Englishmade hard-paste china, composed of native materials alone. The early examples are, as is natural to expect, very coarse, rough, and inferior, but they evidence, nevertheless, considerable skill in mixing, though not so much, perhaps, in firing. And they are also remarkable for their clumsiness, as well as for their bad colour, their uneven glazing, and their being almost invariably disfigured by fire cracks—if nowhere else, almost invariably at the bottom. On many of the pieces the colour (blue) on which the pattern was drawn, has “run” in the glazing, and thus disfigured the pieces. As examples of the early make of Plymouth, an inkstand belonging to Mrs. Lydia Prideaux, of Plymouth, is an excellent specimen. It was for many years the office inkstand of her father, who died in 1796, and was got by him from the son of a workman in the china factory. It is very clumsy in make, of coarse body, rough in the glaze, uneven in colour, and is, perhaps, one of the best and most characteristic existing specimens of the early make of Plymouth. It is circular, nearly five and a half inches in diameter; around the top is a border in blue, and round the hollowed sides are octagonal spaces with Chinese figures and landscapes, connected together by a diapered band, all in blue. The inkstand bears the usual Plymouth mark on the bottom, in blue.
Another early example worthy of note is a pounce-pot, formerly in the possession of the late Mr. James, of Bristol. Like the inkstand and other early examples, it is coarse in texture, rough on the surface, and imperfect in the glaze. It is painted with flowers in blue, and has the mark also in blue on the bottom.
As on the earliest productions of all the old china works, the decorations on the Plymouth examples are invariably blue; the blue at first being of a heavy, dull, blackish shade, but gradually improving, until, on some specimens which I have seen, it had attained a clear brilliance. Cookworthy, being a good chemist, paid considerable attention to the producing of a good blue, and was the first who succeeded in this country in manufacturing cobalt blue direct from the ore. Before this time the colour was prepared by grinding foreign imported zaffres with slab and muller; but after a series of experiments he succeeded in producing a fine and excellent blue from the cobalt ore, and prepared it by a better process. It is said that Cookworthy himself painted some of the earlier blue and white productions of his manufactory, and this is not at all improbable.
Examples of the finer and more advanced class of blue and white are, like the earlier and more primitive attempts, scarce.
Fig. 706.
