Antique Porcelain and British ceramics including early Worcester porcelain, Spode porcelain, Lowestoft porcelain, Chelsea porcelain, Swansea porcelain, Nantgarw and Derby Porcelain and more with a potted history of each.
Exquisitely crafted antique porcelain pieces from the Far East began to find their way across Europe and in to Great Britain as a consequence of increased communication with – and exploration of – the country in which it was produced. As a result, the name China was to quickly become synonymous with the finer grades of material, and it persists to this day as a generic term for antique porcelain wares.
Naturally, as manufacturing industries in Britain and Western Europe evolved during the late 17th century onwards, the logical progression was to look to produce home-grown versions of these once-imported and therefore expensive wares and to find sources of the requisite materials and their blend to produce porcelain-like material. With the impetus of the industrial revolution behind them, British manufacturers refined more broadly-used techniques from the continent and began to develop their own unique styles and decorative proficiencies, peculiar to specific locations and factories as they sought to replicate the sought-after items from overseas.
As a result, rather than the mass production of English porcelain as a largely homogenous and indistinct range of products, the roll-call of individual manufacturers with which we are still familiar quickly became part of the 18th century British industrial fabric – Dr Wall and Worcester porcelain, the Chelsea porcelain of Charles Gouyn, Thomas Turner and Caughley, Derby porcelain, Bow porcelain and Thomas Frye, William Littler and Longton Hall to name but a few.
They would all go on to develop their own areas of expertise and specialisation, looking to carve a niche in the market place in which they could excel, which means that the modern collector has the option to pursue as narrow or wide-ranging a selection of antique china products as they choose – from something as non-specific as blue and white underglazed dining plates, to fostering an exclusive interest in Staffordshire salt-glazed stoneware teapots or Alcock’s Cobridge flare-topped spill vases.
Although pattern books and decorator’s templates mean that there was perhaps less scope for individual expression with the manufacture of what were essentially factory-made products than one might find with contemporary glassware, the creation of entire sets and collections of antique British porcelain to common designs mean that the acquisitive completist will find ample scope to indulge their fancy with English porcelain – we hope that we may be able to provide you with that particularly elusive item for which you have been searching…
