Pinxton in Derbyshire. Established about 1795, by Billingsley in partnership with John Coke; the former was a practical potter, having been engaged at the Derby works as a flower painter, in which capacity he excelled; he brought with him a staff of workmen and their families, and the factory went on successfully for about five or six years, when Billingsley left; it was continued by Coke, and afterwards by Cutts the foreman, but was altogether discontinued about 1812. The ware made here by Billingsley was of a peculiar transparent character; and a favourite pattern was the French sprig or “Chantilly,” being an imitation of the Angoulême china.
Fig. 296.—Jardinière.
Fig. 297.—Sugar Bowl and Cover.
Lowestoft. According to Gillingham’s History of Lowestoft, written in 1790, an attempt was made to manufacture porcelain there in 1756 by Mr. Hewlin Luson of Gunton Hall, he having found some fine clay on his estate suitable for the purpose, and in the following year Messrs. Gillingwater, Walker, Browne, Aldred, and Richman, established the Lowestoft porcelain works, which existed until 1802. The porcelain was of soft paste, and in 1902 fragments of it and moulds were found on the site of the factory. The theory that hard paste was made at Lowestoft or that Chinese porcelain was painted there has now been abandoned.
Plymouth. About the year 1755 William Cookworthy commenced his experiments to ascertain the nature of true porcelain of hard paste, and searched with great perseverance throughout England for the materials which were the constituent parts of Chinese porcelain. At length a friend of his discovered on the estate of Lord Camelford, in the parish of St. Stephen’s, Cornwall, “a certain white saponaceous clay, and close by it a species of granite or moorstone, white with greenish spots, which he immediately perceived to be the two long sought-for ingredients, the one giving whiteness and body to the paste, the other vitrification and transparency.”
Fig. 298.—Coffee-pot.
