In a town like Plymouth, where Art has always found a home, and whose sons have so greatly distinguished themselves, it is not to be wondered that the paintings and decorations on china should assume a high character for design and treatment. In a neighbourhood which has the honour of having given birth to Sir Joshua Reynolds, to James Northcote, to Haydon, to Sir Charles Eastlake, to Opie, to William Cooke, and to a score others, it would be strange indeed if the Art part of the manufacture had not been prominently good, and had not produced artists, like Henry Bone, of more than local excellence.
The ware made at Plymouth consisted of dinner services, tea and coffee services, mugs and jugs; vases, trinket and toilet stands, busts, single figures and groups, animals, “Madonnas,” and other figures after foreign models, candlesticks with birds, flowers, &c., &c. The large mug (Fig. [712]) is an excellent example of the higher, and, of course, later, productions of Cookworthy’s manufactory. It is a quart mug, remarkably well potted, clear in its colour and glaze, and exquisitely painted by Saqui on the one side with peacock and pheasant and landscapes, and on the other with a group of flowers. Mugs of this form, and different sizes, painted with birds and flowers, are to be found in different collections, and are usually marked in red or blue. The peculiarity of the specimen here engraved is, that besides being remarkably good in its painting, it is marked with the usual sign, but instead of being in colour, is incised before glazing. The bottom is also disfigured, as so frequently occurs, with a fire crack. The incised mark on this mug is engraved (Fig. [710]). Some very good mugs of the form and style of this one were shown in the Exhibition of 1851, in Mr. Phillips’s case, illustrating the raw material and productions of the clay district. They were marked in red, and belonged to Mr. George Pridham, of Plymouth. On the same engraving with the mug I have given a representation of a teapot, which is beautifully painted with groups of flowers in pink. That Cookworthy endeavoured to procure good artists is evident by the following advertisement in 1770:—
Fig. 710.
Figs. 711 to 713.
“China painters wanted, for the Plymouth new invented Patent Porcelain Manufactory.—A number of sober, ingenious artists, capable of painting in enamel or blue, may hear of constant employ by sending their proposals to Thomas Frank, in Castle Street, Bristol.”
Among the busts and statuettes are an admirable bust of George II., after the statue by Ruysbranch, in Queen’s Square, Bristol; Woodward, the actor; Mrs. Clive; a shepherd; and shepherdess, &c., which show that excellent modellers must have been employed.
One of the finest productions of the Plymouth Works, and evidently of the latest, is a pair of splendid vases and covers, sixteen inches high, in the possession of Mr. Francis Fry, of Bristol. One of these is here engraved (Fig. [714]). It is hexagonal, and is enriched with festoons of beautifully-modelled raised flowers, and with painted butterflies, leaves, borders, &c. These vases are of precisely the same general form as some unique examples of Bristol make, which I shall have to describe when writing on those works, from which, however, they differ in ornament and detail, and they are evidently the production of the same artists. They are marked with the usual sign in red.
