Collections.—The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum contain the best general collections of English porcelain. The museums at Bristol and Liverpool contain examples of the local wares; while the museum at the Worcester Royal Porcelain works has an admirable collection of the wares of that factory. Many noteworthy private collections are in existence, of which we may mention those of Mr Dyson Perrins, Mr Cockshutt and Mr Trapnell.
Literature.—Alex. Brongniart, Traitié des arts céramiques (1844); Jacquemart, Histoire de la céramique (Eng. ed. 1873); Jännicke, Grundriss der Keramik (1879); Dr Brinkmann, Handbook of European Porcelains in the Hamburg Museum; Marryat, History of Pottery and Porcelain (1857); Jewitt, Ceramic Art of Great Britain (1878); Auscher, A History and Description of French Porcelain (1905); Burton, A History and Description of English Porcelain (1902); Dillon, Porcelain (1904); Solon, Old English Porcelain (1903); Burton, Porcelain (1906); R. Almstrom, Lervarorna och deras Tillverkning (1903).
(W. B.*)
Pottery and Porcelain during the 19th Century
The development of the manufacture of pottery and porcelain in Europe and America throughout the 19th century need not be treated in such detail as the history of its growth up to that period, for modern means of communication and the general diffusion of knowledge have tended to destroy the individual character which was so marked a feature of the pottery of different countries in previous centuries. The 19th century was distinctly the century of machinery, and, for the most part, it witnessed the displacement by mechanical processes of those methods of handicraft which made the older pottery individual and interesting even in its simplest forms. Collectors are prepared to pay very large sums for choice examples of the potter’s art of bygone centuries, but it is doubtful if much of the pottery of the 19th century will ever be collected for its intrinsic merits, though it may be preserved as an illustration of the spirit of the age.
In preceding sections of this article the development of the brightly painted tin-enamelled wares and the gaily decorated porcelains of various European countries have been traced down to the end of the 18th century, because that date marks, quite distinctly, the period when the old handicraft of the potter was for various reasons displaced by organized manufacture. The disturbed economic condition of Europe in the last quarter of the 18th century and the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century proved disastrous to most of the pottery and porcelain works where artistic wares were made, and the disturbance of traditional methods was completed by the superior mechanical perfection and cheapness of the English earthenware introduced by Wedgwood and his contemporaries. The English pottery was neater, more perfectly finished and more durable than the painted tin-enamelled pottery of the continent. It vied in finish with the expensive continental porcelains, and for nearly half a century it carried all before it, not only in England, but throughout the world. An intelligent observer, M. Faujas de Saint Fond, writing in the beginning of the 19th century, remarks of English pottery that “Its excellent workmanship, its solidity, the advantage which it possesses of sustaining the action of fire, its fine glaze impenetrable to acids, the beauty and convenience of its form, and the cheapness of its price, have given rise to a commerce so active and so universal, that in travelling from Paris to Petersburg, from Amsterdam to the farthest parts of Sweden, and from Dunkirk to the extremity of the south of France one is served at every inn upon English ware. Spain, Portugal and Italy are supplied with it; and vessels are loaded with it for the East Indies, the West Indies, and the continent of America.”[36] It was calculated that at this time three-fourths of the pottery manufactured in England was sent abroad. Such a state of things was not likely to continue, and in most of the European countries, after the settlement of 1815, such of the older factories as had survived, or new factories specially created for the purpose, adopted English methods of manufacture. In many cases experienced Staffordshire potters were procured to direct these works, and so far as ordinary domestic pottery was concerned, the first half of the 19th century witnessed the establishment in every country of Europe and in the United States of America of pottery works managed by Englishmen, where earthenwares were made after the English fashion. We shall refer presently to the survival or revival of the older styles of pottery and porcelain, but the English influence was undoubtedly paramount, with one or two notable exceptions, down to 1850, or even later. England itself witnessed a notable development of its pottery manufacture, which became more and more aggregated in that district of North Staffordshire designated emphatically “The Potteries,” where, in spite of later developments, from two-thirds to three-quarters of all the pottery and porcelain made in the British Isles is still produced. This concentration of the industry in England has resulted in a race of pottery workers not to be matched elsewhere in the world, and while it was the supply of cheap coal and coarse clay which first gave Staffordshire its pre-eminence, that pre-eminence is now retained as much by the traditional skill of the workmen of the district as by the enterprise of its manufacturers.
Plate IX
| Sèvres. Pâte-tendre, c. 1757, painted by Falot and Morin | Meissen. May-flower vase mounted in ormolu. Pâte-dure |
| Meissen. Crinoline figure (Kandler), Pâte-dure | Sèvres. Pâte-tendre, c. 1756 |
While we must admire, from the economic point of view, the methods of manufacture which have placed England in the first rank as a pottery-producing country, inasmuch as they have brought within the reach of the humblest domestic utensils of high finish and great durability, it is impossible to say much for the taste or art associated with them. Neatness, serviceableness and durability, English domestic wares undoubtedly possess in a degree unknown to any earlier type of pottery, but the general use of transfer-printing as the principal method of decoration, and the absence of any distinctive style of ornament, must cause them to take a low rank in comparison with the wares of past centuries, when mechanical perfection was impossible and rich colour and truly decorative painting were the chief distinctions of the pottery of every country. The London International Exhibition of 1851 is generally supposed to indicate the low-water mark of art as applied to industry; it should rather be regarded as marking the period when many of the old handicrafts had been extinguished by the use of mechanical appliances and the growth of the factory system, and when the delight of men in these current developments was so great that they were regarded as triumphs in themselves, when they were only “means to an end.”
Since that period the development of pottery and porcelain has followed two main directions: (1) an attempt on the part of manufacturers to produce the most artistic results possible with modern processes and methods, and (2) the interesting and valuable efforts of those individual potters in every country with whom art was the first consideration and commercial production was disregarded.