Plymouth porcelain was the first English hard paste porcelain, made in the county of Devon from 1768 to 1770. After two years in Plymouth the factory moved to Bristol in 1770, where it operated until 1781, when it was sold and moved to Staffordshire as the nucleus of New Hall porcelain, which operated until 1835. The Plymouth factory was founded by William Cookworthy.[1] The porcelain factories at Plymouth and Bristol were among the earliest English manufacturers of porcelain, and the first to produce the hard-paste porcelain produced in China and the German factories led by Meissen porcelain.[2]
The term Bristol porcelain can refer either to this, the Cookworthy factory, or to "Lund's Bristol" or "Lund & Miller", an entirely different porcelain factory that made soft-paste porcelain in Bristol from 1750 until 1752, when it merged with the young Worcester porcelain (see there for more information), and moved there.[3]
The Plymouth factory was removed to Bristol in 1770 and was afterwards transferred to Richard Champion of Bristol, a merchant who had been a shareholder from 1768. Champion's Bristol factory lasted from 1774 to 1781, when the business was sold to a number of Staffordshire potters owing to serious losses it had accrued.[4] Bristol porcelain, like that of Plymouth, was a hard-paste porcelain.[5] It is harder and whiter than the other 18th-century English soft-paste porcelains, and its cold, harsh, glittering glaze marks it off at once from the wares of Bow, Chelsea, Worcester or Derby.[4]
The Plymouth pieces show technical teething troubles. There are various technical faults with many pieces, and according to legend Cookworthy painted one early mug himself, and another piece was chipped in manufacture but still thought worth painting.[6] Some pieces use Longton Hall models; possibly Cookworthy bought the moulds in London. The modellers are unclear, though some figures are very fine, including the set of the continents ("Europe" illustrated). One modeller seems also to have worked at Derby.[7]
- ^ Honey, 1-5, Chapter 14; Cookworthy's Plymouth and Bristol Porcelain by F. Severne Mackenna (1947) published by F.Lewis and William Cookworthy 1705–1780: a study of the pioneer of true porcelain manufacture in England by John Penderill-Church, Truro, Bradford Barton (1972).
- ^ Honey, 1-5
- ^ Honey, 211-216
- ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
EB1911was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "The Bristol Factory". Rod Dowling. 22 January 2013. Retrieved 2 October 2015.
- ^ Honey, 336-342
- ^ Honey, 342-345