Fig. 736.—Flower Tazza and Pedestal.
The productions of the Belleek works comprise all the usual services—dinner, breakfast, tea, dessert, and toilet—in large variety of patterns and of various styles of decoration, and in addition to these a vast variety of ornamental goods are produced. Figures and groups of figures, animals, &c., are also made, and are characterized by excellent modelling and judicious colouring—the peculiar Belleek glaze imparting to them a beauty all their own. Boudoir candlesticks and other choice examples of art also evidence considerable skill on the part of the artists in the modelling of the flowers and foliage and in the arrangement of the wreaths.
Among the choicest examples of actual manipulative skill produced by any manufactory are some cabinet cups and saucers, the extreme delicacy of which far surpasses the ordinary “egg-shell” china. The cup itself is the echinus, and the saucer is also tastefully modelled from the same; the body is so thin, and worked to such a degree of nicety, as to be of little more than the thickness of common writing paper. This delicate body, either plain, or tinted and gilt and then glazed with the iridescent glaze so characteristic of the Belleek ware, is unique in its appearance and matchless in its extreme delicacy. Of the same filmy body cardium and other shells are also produced, and are exquisitely tinted.
Fig. 737.—Boudoir Flower Shells.
Besides the speciality of these works (the “Belleek China”) Messrs. McBirney and Armstrong manufacture to a large extent white granite ware services of every variety, and of excellent quality both in body, in glaze, and in printed, painted, enamelled, and gilt decorations. Many of the patterns are of more than average excellence, and in every respect the Irish earthenware equals the ordinary commercial classes of Staffordshire wares. The dinner-ware is especially serviceable, being a true felspathic body, semi-vitrified, and hence ranking next to the true porcelain; smooth and admirably potted. The simple ornamentation to which it has been subjected is pure in style and Art, while the article competes as to price with inferior ware in the markets of England and America. Indeed the trade with America is already large, and is regularly increasing.
Parian and ordinary white china, as well as ivory body, are also largely made in a vast variety of styles.
Not only in these home essentials is its place established; Belleek furnishes largely the “porcelain insulators” (containing 70 per cent. local felspar) used for telegraph poles, and these have been pronounced by “authorities” the best. In pestles and mortars the factory has considerable trade, and of the minor articles of patch-boxes, &c., there is enormous produce. For supremacy in these objects it is indebted to the purity of the clay and felspar, producing a clear brilliant white, and singular “compactness,” resulting in remarkable hardness and durability. In sanitary ware, cabinet-stands, plug-basins, and other articles, form a staple part of the trade of these works.
The marks used by the Belleek Company are the following:
BELLEEK CO. FERMANAGH.