Everything about Plymouth Porcelain totally explained
Plymouth porcelain was a
hard paste porcelain made in the
English county of
Devon in the
18th century .
The porcelain factories at
Plymouth and
Bristol are mainly noteworthy because they were the only English factories in which a true porcelain strictly analogous to the
Chinese was ever manufactured.
William Cookworthy, a
Quaker Pharmacist of Plymouth, was greatly interested in attempting to discover in
Cornwall and
Devon minerals similar to those which were described by Père François Xavier d'Entrecolles, a
Jesuit missionary who worked in China during the early eighteenth century, as forming the basis of
Chinese porcelain. Père d'Entrecolles provided an account in two letters, the first written in 1712 and the second written in 1722, of porcelain manufacture at the town of
Jingdezhen that included a detailed description of the two principal materials used to make porcelain,
china clay and
Chinese porcelain stone. After many years of travel and research William Cookworthy determined that
Cornish china clay and
Cornish stone could be made to serve as equivalents to the Chinese materials and in
1768 he founded a works at Plymouth for the production of a porcelain similar to the Chinese from these native materials.
The factory was removed to Bristol in
1770 and was shortly afterwards transferred to Richard Champion, a Bristol merchant, who had already been dabbling in the fashionable pursuit of porcelain making. Champion's Bristol factory lasted from
1773 to
1781, when the business had to be sold to a number of
Staffordshire potters owing to the serious losses it had entailed. The Bristol porcelain, like that of Plymouth, was always a true
felspathic porcelain resembling the Chinese, but made from the china clay and china stone of Cornwall. It is, therefore, harder and whiter than the other English porcelains, and its cold, harsh, glittering glaze marks it off at once from the wares of
Bow,
Chelsea,
Worcester or
Derby.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Plymouth Porcelain'.
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