Excepting to the trade, and to some of the old inhabitants, it is not generally known that Martin Randall established China Works at Madeley, and made porcelain similar to that of Nantgarw and little if at all inferior to old Sevres porcelain. He and his brother Edward were Caughley men; he left there to go to Derby. He afterwards went to Pinxton, and thence with Mr. Robins, a Pinxton man, to London, where they entered into partnership and carried on business. They were supplied with Nantgarw white china by Mr. Mortlock, till Mr. Rose cut off the supply from the Welsh Works, by engaging Billingsley and Walker to make it for himself alone at the Coalport Works. They still continued to carry on business at Islington, where they erected buildings suitable, and fired the ware in box kilns with charcoal.

About this time the demand was great with connoisseurs among the aristocracy for old Sevres china; and the London dealers, finding that it was not obtainable in sufficient quantities to meet the demand for highly decorated specimens, hit upon the expedient of employing agents in Paris to buy up Sevres china in white for the purpose of having it painted in London, as Nantgarw had been, and selling it to their customers as the bona fide productions of Sevres. Slightly painted patterns too were procured, and the colours got off with fluoric acid, and rich and expensive paintings, grounds, and gilding substituted.

About the year 1826 they dissolved partnership and Mr. Randall came to Madeley, where he occupied a house in Park Lane, now the residence of the Wesleyan minister. He then took more commodious premises at the lower end of Madeley, where he erected enamelling, biscuit, and other kilns, and made and finished his own ware. Thomas Wheeler, William Roberts, and F. Brewer, were his potters; Philip Ballard, Robert Grey, and the present writer, were painters there, and Enos Raby was ground layer. John Fox of Coalbrookdale, William Dorsett, of Madeley, also were with Mr. Randall for a short time. Not having had experience in the making of china, great mistaken were committed, and heavy losses sustained. We have known a biscuit kiln fired till tea-pots and cups and saucers were melted into a mass before a trial was drawn, crow bars being necessary to remove them; in some instances they assumed the most fantastic forms. At other times the ware would be short fired in the biscuit kiln and would take up so much glaze that on coming out of the glaze kiln it would fly off in splinters. These wastrels were buried, broken up, or thrown into the canal, to be out of sight.

Mr. Randall however, as the result of repeated and persevering experiments, succeeded in producing a fret body with a rich glaze which bore so close a resemblance to old Sevres china that connoisseurs and famous judges failed to distinguish them. He refused however, from conscientious motives, to put the Sevres mark, the initials of Louis. Louis, crossed at the bottom, which was done with less hesitation at Coalport with much more feeble imitations. When introduced on one occasion to a London dealer, of the name of Frost, who had a shop in the Strand, as Mr. Martin Randall’s nephew, the dealer in old china observed that the old Quaker made the best imitation of Sevres that ever was made, but added, “he never could be got to put the double L on it, and we cannot sell it as Sevres.” We remarked that he was “too conscientious to do so,” upon which he replied, “O, d—n conscience; there is no conscience in business.”

Mr. Randall had less hesitation however in putting the Sevres mark on what was known to be Sevres; and he did very much for Mortlock, Jarman, and Baldock, who had agents in Paris, attending all sales where old Sevres was to be sold, in redecorating it in the most elaborate and costly manner. The less scrupulous London agents however did not hesitate to pass it off as being really the work throughout of Sevres artists. Indeed they have been known to have boxes of china going up from Madeley, sent on to Dover, to be redirected as coming from France, inviting connoisseurs to come and witness them being unpacked on their arrival, as they represented, from Paris. A little entertainment would be got up, and supposing themselves to be the first whose eyes looked on the rich goods after they left the French capital, where it would be represented, perhaps, that they had been bought of the Duc-de—or of Madame some one, after having been in the possession of royalty, they would buy freely.

Sevres porcelain fetched high prices then, but it has risen higher in the market, even since, and has gone on rising to the present time. In 1850 cups and saucers fetched from £25 to £30 each, and bowls £66 or £70. Three oval vases and covers at Lord Pembroke’s sale fetched £1020. Prices have however since gone up; and at Mr. Bernal’s sale a pair of rose Dubarry vases sold for 1850 guineas; and cups and saucers for £100. Single plates have since sold for £200; vases for 500 or 600 guineas each, and cups and saucers for 150 guineas. A year ago a set of three Jardiniers fetched at Christie’s, by auction, £10,000!

We remember seeing an ornament at the Marquis of Anglesey’s at Beau Desert which we were assured was old Sevres, and had been purchased at a great price on the continent, but which we recognised as one of our own painting at Madeley. A man can always tell his own painting; but it is not an easy matter for another however experienced sometimes to do so. An amusing instance occurred at Coalport. Mr. F. W. Rose who had been conversant from a child with china, on one occasion bought a vase, painted with birds, believing it to be old Sevres, but which was made at the Coalport Works and painted by the present writer at Madeley. Mr. Rose, sending for us down to the office said, “here, Randall, is a vase I have given a good price for, which is the right thing; can you do anything like it?” Our reply was, it would be strange if we could not, as we did that when a lad, adding that it was made at his own manufactory, that it was modelled by George Aston, and purchased out of the warehouse, in the white, by T. Martin Randall. We need scarcely say that he was very much astonished on finding he had been duped by a London china dealer with a piece of his own ware. It was put out of sight; but the late Mr. Pugh did not forget occasionally to remind his partner of the incident.

Mr. Randall removed from Madeley to Shelton, in the Potteries, for the greater convenience of carrying on his works. He was invited by the late Herbert Minton to become a partner, and to make his ware for the benefit of both at his extensive works at Stoke. Age however, and a longing for retirement led him to decline, and he soon afterwards retired to a cottage at Barleston, where he died, and was buried, in a sunny spot of his own choosing, within sound of the murmuring waters of the Trent. He was a good man; one holding large and liberal views, and one who took an active part in various social and religious movements of the day, being an active promoter more particularly of Temperance Societies, when first established in this country. Specimens of his ware are much prized and sought after by collectors. A fine specimen with torquoise ground is in the possession of Henry Dickinson Esq.

The chief beauty of Mr. Randall’s porcelain, like that of other fret bodies, or pate tendre china, was that it admitted of a complete amalgamation of the painting with the glaze, and also of a richness and depth of colour, as in the case of torquoise, not to be produced on ordinary china.