Plymouth and Bristol Porcelain

William Cookworthy Richard Champion The Patent Extension The Plymouth Factory Cookworthy's Experiments A Plymouth Kiln The Bristol Factory Workmen Apprentices Cookworthy's Wares + Images Champion's Wares + Images Marks Lund and Miller

A Brief History of Porcelain Hard paste, or true, porcelain was first made by the Chinese in the 9th century, although it took about 500 years to bring it to perfection.  The paste used to form the pottery was made from two minerals, china clay (kaolin) and china stone (petuntse).  Decorative styles included the use of painting in under-glaze blue and over-glaze colored enamels.  True porcelain is white, translucent, strong, and resistant to heat. When the Portuguese first brought porcelain to Europe in the 16th century it caused a sensation.  During the 17th century both the Dutch and the English developed a much larger import trade.  Importation into England continued until the 1790s.  Chinese decorative styles had a big impact on European pottery and porcelain. The first European true porcelain was made by Boettger in 1709.  He was working for Augustus the Strong, the ruler of Saxony.  The following year the state controlled factory of Meissen started production.  By the 1740s their wares were of a very high standard, particularly the much copied figure models by Kaendler. There was other European production, namely soft paste (artificial) porcelain.  This was first successfully made in France in the late 17th century.  The 18th century wares of the royal factory of Sevres are much admired.  Soft paste manufacture was started in England in the 1740s.  The best known factories were Bow, Chelsea, Derby and Worcester.  There were several ways of making soft paste porcelain and the secrets were closely guarded, or patented.  Bristol had a short lived factory, that of Lund and Miller.  Although it lacked the whiteness and strength of hard paste porcelain, soft paste was cheaper to produce.  In the late 1750s some English factories further reduced the cost of manufacture by introducing transfer printing. Hard paste porcelain was first made in England in 1768, by William Cookworthy, and finally abandoned in 1781.  There was no further production, in Britain, until the 20th century.