THE manufacture of true porcelain had but a short life in England. The ware has no especial artistic merit, nor was it ever commercially of much importance. And yet in the history of this short-lived attempt to imitate the porcelain of China and Saxony, we find so many points (in the composition and technique of the ware above all) that illustrate and confirm what we have said in some early chapters, that we shall have to follow up this history somewhat closely.

Moreover, the two men, thanks to whose energy and scientific knowledge the difficulties attending the first manufacture of the new substance were overcome, interest us in more ways than one. There is, in the first place, Cookworthy the quaker, who, once he had solved the practical problem that had hitherto baffled all the potters and arcanists of England and France, was content to return to a quiet life among the little coterie of ‘friends’ at Plymouth. The other is Champion, the friend of Burke, who, after his business had been ruined by the American War, preferred to end his life as a farmer in the new country, with whose struggle for independence he had throughout sympathised.

The two letters of the PÈre D’Entrecolles on the manufacture of porcelain in China were known through their publication in Du Halde’s collection soon after the date (1722) at which the second one was written. The search for the essential constituents of a true porcelain at once began. One of the first results of this search was the appearance of the ‘Unaker, the produce of the Cherokee nation of America,’ which is mentioned in Frye’s patent of 1744. Shortly after the middle of the century, as we learn from Borlase’s History of Cornwall (published in 1758), the attention of more than one manufacturer of porcelain was directed to that county. But no one probably was so well equipped for the search as William Cookworthy, the druggist of Plymouth—he was already thoroughly acquainted with the geology of the county. Cookworthy, too, must have carefully studied the letters of the Jesuit missionary. In the memoir written by him at a later date (it is given in full in Owen’s Two Centuries of Ceramic Art at Bristol) he clearly distinguishes ‘the petunse, the Caulin, and the Wha-she,’ or soapy rock.[245]

In fact it is this that gives to Cookworthy so important a place in the history of porcelain. He was probably the first in Europe to attack practically, and finally to conquer, the problem of making a true porcelain strictly on the lines of the Chinese as interpreted by the PÈre D’Entrecolles. BÖttger’s success, if one is to accept the official German account, was rather the result of some happy accident—an accident, it is true, of which only a man of genius knows how to avail himself.

Cookworthy had his attention directed to the subject by an American quaker, of whom he writes, in May 1745: ‘I had lately with me the person who hath discovered the China-earth. He had several examples of the China ware of their making with him, which were, I think, equal to the Asiatic; ... having read Du Halde, he discovered both the China-stone and the Caulin.’[246]

Both the petuntse and the ‘Caulin’ were first identified by Cookworthy at Tregonnin Hill (between Marazion and Helston)—this was about 1750. The nature and mode of occurrence of both the growan or moor-stone and of the growan clay, to use the local names, are admirably described by him. Soon after this he found the two materials at St. Stephen’s, between Truro and St. Austell, in the centre of what is now the great china-clay district of Cornwall.

There must have been many experiments with the new materials, and many failures, before the year 1768, when Cookworthy took out his patent, and with the pecuniary assistance of Thomas Pitt of Boconnoc (later Lord Camelford) started his factory at Plymouth. It is doubtful whether this factory was in existence for more than two years. In any case there is evidence that already, by the year 1770, the ‘Plymouth New Invented Porcelain Manufactory’ was at work at Bristol.

We have proof, too, that before this time Richard Champion and others had been working in the latter town with the new Cornish materials. Champion had been asked by Lord Hyndford to make a report upon some kaolin sent to him from South Carolina. In his reply he says: ‘I had it tried at a manufactory set up some time ago on the principle of the Chinese porcelain, but not being successful, is given up.... The proprietors of the works in Bristol imagined they had discovered in Cornwall all the materials similar to the Chinese; but though they burnt the body part tolerably well, yet there were impurities in the glaze or stone which were insurmountable even in the greatest fire they could give it, and which was equal to the Glasshouse heat.... I have sent some [i.e. of the Carolina clay] to Worcester, but this and all the English porcelains being composed of frits, there is no probability of success.’ This is written in February 1766, before the date of Cookworthy’s patent.[247]

Meantime, in France, two men of some scientific pretensions, both of them members of the AcadÉmie des Sciences, Lauraguais[248] and D’Arcet, had discovered the kaolin deposits near AlenÇon. Lauraguais had soon after 1760 succeeded in making some kind of porcelain with the materials he had found. He was, however, forestalled by Guettard, a rival chemist in the service of the Duke of Orleans, who in November 1765 read a paper before the AcadÉmie on the kaolin and petuntse of AlenÇon. Lauraguais, in disgust, after a violent rejoinder, came over to England.

In a curious letter dated April 1766, Dr. Darwin, writing to Wedgwood, says: ‘Count Laragaut has been at Birmingham & offer’d ye Secret of making ye finest old China as cheap as your Pots. He says ye materials are in England. That ye secret has cost £16,000—y^tHe will sell it for £2000—He is a Man of Science, dislikes his own Country, was six months in ye Bastile for speaking against ye Government—loves every thing English’; but, adds Darwin, ‘I suspect his Scientific Passion is stronger than perfect Sanity’ (Miss Meteyard, Life of Wedgwood, vol. i. p. 436). Lauraguais, in 1766, proposed to take out a patent for making not only the coarser species of china, but ‘the more beautiful ware of the Indies and the finest of Japan.’ The specification was never enrolled, and nothing came of it. There exist, however, a few specimens of china marked with the letters B. L. (Brancas Lauraguais) in a flowing hand, which are attributed to the Count.[249] The paste, says Professor Church, is fine, hard, and of good colour. An analysis gives 58 per cent. of silica, 36 per cent. of alumina, and 6 per cent. of other bases. It will be observed that the percentage of alumina in this porcelain is exceptionally high.

We see, therefore, that before the year 1770, when Cookworthy removed to Bristol, true porcelain had been made in more than one place in England, but not with enough success to allow the new ware to compete with the soft pastes of Worcester and elsewhere. So in France, although the new paste was introduced at SÈvres in 1769, it was only in 1774, so Brongniart tells us, that the manufacture of hard porcelain was firmly established.

Champion seems to have been on friendly terms with Cookworthy, and in 1773 he bought from the latter the entire patent rights. In the two previous years much of the new porcelain had been made. It is claimed for it in advertisements that, unlike the English china generally, it will wear as well as the East Indian, and that the enamelled porcelain, though nearly as cheap as the English blue and white, ‘comes very near, and in some pieces equals, the Dresden, which this work more particularly imitates.’ This is from a local journal of November 1772, and we may add that not only the ware was imitated, but also the well-known marks of Dresden.[250]

Now, if we turn from these general considerations to examine the nature of the West of England ware, we find some difficulty in drawing a line between the early, partly experimental, porcelain made at Plymouth and the later, more successful, products of the Bristol kilns. Nor will the mark, the alchemist’s sign for Jupiter[251] (Pl. e. 83), first used on the Plymouth porcelain, help us much, for the same mark was certainly used to some extent after Cookworthy’s migration to Bristol.

To Plymouth we must attribute the plain white ware with a glaze of dull hue, disfigured by dark lines where the glaze lies thick in the interstices. Cookworthy, we know, attempted to make his glaze from the Cornish stone without the addition of any other substances.[252] In other cases he followed the recipe given by the PÈre D’Entrecolles, and gave greater fusibility to the growan-stone by adding a small quantity of a frit made from a mixture of lime and fern ashes. Cookworthy even ventured to follow the Chinese plan, and applied the glaze to the raw

or very slightly baked paste. The blue and white made by him, if we may judge from the little mug in the British Museum, with the arms of Plymouth and the date, March 14, 1768, was of very poor quality. The Oriental designs on his enamelled porcelain seem to have come to him by way of Chantilly. More successful was the plain white ware modelled in relief, in a way that often calls to mind the early work of Bow. A good example is the ‘Tridacna’ salt-cellar in the former Jermyn Street collection.

At least one French modeller and enameller was employed at Plymouth, and after the removal to Bristol we find the name of a German also. Henry Bone, a Truro man, who afterwards became famous as a miniature-painter in enamels, entered the works at Bristol as a lad, and passed there the six years of his apprenticeship. Bone, who later on wrote R.A. after his name, was the principal representative in England of the school of painters in enamel upon slabs of porcelain, that played so important a part at SÈvres at the beginning of the last century. At one time a modeller of some skill must have been employed. Perhaps this was the mysterious Soqui or Le Quoi.[253] Some little statuettes in the Schreiber collection at South Kensington, ‘the Seasons,’ as represented by boys and girls, are charmingly modelled. But we must not look for any brilliancy of colour in the enamels. The highly infusible nature of the paste, and what is even more important, of the glaze, added immensely to the difficulty of obtaining anything of the kind. If we compare the enamels on these statuettes with those on the Chelsea and Derby figures in the same collection, the difference is at once apparent. The two most important colours in the latter wares, the rose-pink and the turquoise, it was impossible to develop at the high temperature required to soften the refractory glaze of the hard porcelain. The greens, however, and the coral reds of the Bristol figures are more successful. In the specifications of 1775 there is mention of a glaze containing much kaolin mixed with some arsenic and tin oxide.[254] Such a glaze might allow of more brilliancy in the enamels, and it is to be noticed in this connection that some statuettes long classed as Chelsea have only comparatively lately been recognised as consisting of the Bristol paste.

Perhaps what we may regard as the most remarkable, certainly the most original, work produced by Champion are the little circular or oval plaques of white biscuit. These medallions vary from four to nine inches in diameter. The central field contains a coat-of-arms modelled in low relief, or more rarely a portrait bust, and among these last we find heads of Benjamin Franklin and of George Washington, pointing to the political sympathies of Champion. A wreath of flowers in full relief surrounds the field—the sharpness and the finish in the modelling of these minute leaves and blossoms has never been approached in this or other material. In the manner of treatment, these wreaths are thoroughly English, and we are reminded of the flowers carved in wood by Grinling Gibbons (Pl. xlix.).

Champion made also a commoner ware, which he called ‘cottage china.’ This was summarily decorated in colours without any gilding. The glaze on this ware was applied over the raw paste, on the Chinese plan that had already been tried by Cookworthy.

Champion was an active politician and a vehement

supporter of the American colonists in their dispute with the mother country. The visit of Edmund Burke to Bristol in 1774, and his election as member for the city, may be regarded as the climax of his career. Then it was that the famous tea-set was presented by Champion and his wife to Mrs. Burke, as a pignus amicitiÆ. Still more elaborately decorated was the other service that Burke gave to Mrs. Smith, the wife of the friend of Champion, at whose house he stayed on this occasion. The shapes and the decoration of this service were founded on Dresden models, and the wreaths of laurels that formed an essential part of the design afforded a good field for the display of the green colour in which Champion excelled.

But Champion’s troubles were now to begin. In 1775 his petition to Parliament for a renewal of his patent was vigorously opposed by Wedgwood. Champion must have been put to great expense—he exhibited before a committee of the House some selected specimens of his porcelain. He, however, won his case, though the monopoly in the employment of the Cornish clays was restricted to their use as a material for transparent wares, a point of some importance to the Staffordshire potter. But meantime the American War was ruining his business—for Champion was in the first place a merchant trading with the West Indies and America—and it is probable that little porcelain was made by him after 1777. The next year Wedgwood, his inveterate opponent, in a letter to Bentley, says of him, ‘Poor Champion, you may have heard, is quite demolished.... I suppose we might buy some Growan-stone and Growan-clay now upon easy terms.’ In 1781, after a long negotiation, he disposed of his patent to some Staffordshire potters, and shortly after this he emigrated to America. Champion was only forty-eight years old when, in 1791, he died at his new home in South Carolina.

As Professor Church has pointed out, the paste of the Bristol porcelain is of exceptional hardness. It is, in fact, in some specimens as hard as quartz, that is, say, the hardness is equal to 7 in the scale of the mineralogist: the hardness of Oriental porcelain, it will be remembered, varies between 6 and 6·5; the glaze on the Bristol china is about 6 on the same scale. The fractured surface may be described as subconchoidal and somewhat flaky, with a greasy to vitreous lustre. On the Plymouth and Bristol wares, especially on the larger vases, may often be seen, when viewed in a favourable light, certain spiral ridges, the result of the unequal pressure of the ‘thrower’s’ hand. Similar ridges may indeed be observed at times on other hard paste wares, both Chinese and European, and this ‘wreathing’ or vissage, as Brongniart long ago pointed out, is the result of the too great plasticity of the clay,—a clay may, in fact, be too ‘fat’ to work well on the wheel. This plasticity, however, would be of advantage to the modeller, especially when working on a very small scale; indeed the delicate floral reliefs in biscuit, on the plaques we have already spoken of, could only have been made from a fine and unctuous clay. How refractory to heat this same paste is, was well proved by the fire at the Alexandra Palace in 1873, when so many fine specimens of English porcelain were destroyed. A biscuit plaque or medallion of Bristol porcelain passed uninjured (by heat at least) through this fire, while the soft porcelain alongside of it was completely melted.

The paste, then, of this Bristol ware is remarkable both for its resistance to heat and for its great plasticity. These are both qualities that point to an excess of kaolin in its composition, and this excess is confirmed by analysis. Professor Church found in a specimen of Bristol china 63 per cent. of silica, 33 per cent. of alumina, and only 4 per cent. of lime and alkalis. The percentage of alumina is about the same as that in the hard pastes of Meissen and of SÈvres, but the small amount of the other bases is quite exceptional. A paste of this composition would contain about 65 per cent. of kaolin.

And here, before ending, we may for a moment return to what is, perhaps, the crucial point of all in the composition of true porcelain—for it is one that has a radical influence both on the technical and on the artistic side. The first question we must ask when inquiring into the composition of any specimen of porcelain is this—What proportion of kaolin enters into its composition? Or if it is a matter of the primary constituents of the paste—What is the percentage of alumina that it contains? Now we may consider the composition of kaolin, after removing the water, to be silica 54 per cent. and alumina 46 per cent., and the nearer the composition of our porcelain approaches to these figures, the greater will be its hardness, its resistance to fire, and the greater also the plasticity of the paste—the greater in fact will be what we have called the ‘severity’ of the type.[255]

Now for the other component of porcelain, the petuntse or china-stone. The composition of this material differs widely, but let us take the mean of some analyses of Cornish stone. On this basis we may take silica 72 per cent., alumina 18 per cent., other bases 10 per cent., as our type. The result of adding such a material to our kaolin will be to increase the percentage of silica and of the ‘other bases,’ and to diminish the percentage of alumina in the resultant mixture. Our paste now becomes less plastic and the resultant porcelain more readily softened by heat, but at the same time less hard.

So far every one would be agreed. But the question now arises, are we to attribute this increased fusibility to the higher percentage of the other bases (these are, in the case of European porcelain, practically lime and potash), or in a measure at least to the increased amount of silica in the paste? We have here three variants, the silica, the alumina, and the ‘other bases,’ and the case is therefore somewhat complicated. I think, however, that the careful examination of any table giving the composition of various types of porcelain would show that up to a certain point an increase in the amount of silica promotes a lower softening-point in the paste, and this in cases where there is no important change in the proportion of the ‘other bases.’ I will illustrate this by comparing the composition of the severe hard paste of SÈvres on the one hand with an analysis of a mild type of Chinese porcelain on the other:—

No doubt, if the percentage of silica is further increased, say beyond 78 or 80 per cent., we get again a practically infusible body. But with a paste of this composition the resultant ware is no longer translucent—we pass from the region of porcelain to a true stoneware.

Thus we see that in composition a mild porcelain forms a middle term between stoneware on the one hand, and a severe porcelain on the other. In other words, stoneware cannot be regarded as an extreme type of a refractory porcelain.