Howard Coutts reviews an admirable survey of a factory that embodies the way porcelain was transformed from an aristocratic luxury into a middle-class essential

Apollo, August, 2005 by Howard Coutts

New Hall Porcelains

Geoffrey A. Godden

Antique Collectors' Club, 65 [pounds sterling]

ISBN 1 85149 463 4

The porcelain factory at New Hall in Shelton in Staffordshire marks the transition between the production of porcelain as a luxury material in Britain in the eighteenth century, and the production of fine 'bone china' for the middle classes in the nineteenth century. Founded in about 1781-83, it was run by a group of potters who had obtained access to the patent of the Bristol factory for making true 'hard-paste' porcelain (like the Chinese)--a unique achievement in eighteenth-century Britain. This was made from a mixture of Cornish china clay and china stone. However, the New Hall body itself, Godden shows, is not the normal hard paste, but a version in which the glaze is fired to a lesser temperature than the main body, akin to the production of the artificial 'soft-paste' porcelain made in Britain in the eighteenth century.

The early products of New Hall were virtually all teawares, most made in direct competition or emulation with imports of porcelain from China. They comprise the full range of cups and saucers, milk jugs, covered sugar bowls or boxes, slop bowls, teapots and stands. However, the range of shapes is somewhat limited--no neo-classical extravagances here--and the range of patterns is similarly close to simple patterns of late-eighteenth-century Chinese porcelain. No doubt the factory did excellent business after the East India Company stopped the official trade in Chinese porcelain in 1791 (private trade could continue via the company's staff).

The factory had a moment of glory when it employed the Belgian artist and decorator Fidele Duvivier, who had formerly worked at Tournai, Derby and Oud Loosdrecht in Holland. He produced some charming teawares decorated with putti and children in the rococo manner, and two wonderful mugs, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, painted with children as topers outside a tavern. The date of his work at New Hall is not clear, but there exists a letter in which he discusses the end of his employment there in 1790, prior to becoming a drawing master at a school.

The factory then seems to go through a rather murky undocumented period (few archives survive for British factories, as they were not state concerns), although the characteristic New Hall 'silver shape' teapot seems to date from this time (the V&A has an example dated 1803). A more interesting and ambitious period comes in the early nineteenth century, with the emergence of fine-quality transfer overglaze or 'bat' printing, where a fine engraved, stippled design is transferred to the ceramic body by means of a rubber 'bat' of glue, and then sprinkled with powdered colour to give the effect of a coloured print. A characteristic of New Hall is the use of 'Warburton's Patent', whereby powdered gold or platinum (to create a silver effect) is used. These pieces are sometimes painted with the mark 'Warburton's Patent', one of the few factory marks on New Hall apart from painted pattern numbers.

A breakthrough came for the factory in about 1813, when it adopted the by-now standard Staffordshire body of 'bone china'--essentially hard-paste porcelain with the addition of bone ash--and produced a whole series of Spode look-alike teawares, as well as some lavish dessert services. It now seems occasionally to have marked its wares 'New Hall' in a printed mark in a circle. As there are few documents for the factory, other than a price list, it is difficult to date the introduction of these shapes and wares, although many are in the lavish style of the 1820s. A well-known series is copied with scenes in colour after Rowlandson's Tours of Dr Syntax, published from 1809 onwards. The factory also made porcelain jugs imitating the Wedgwood jasperware, as did other factories in Staffordshire.

There remains to be explained an exceptional, enigmatic pottery model of the factory lettered NEW HALL CHINA MANUFACTORY STAFFORDSHIRE and dated '1813'. A number of copies exist (one is in the Potteries Museum in Stoke): it may be some kind of commemorative piece made in the 1860s, when the factory was first researched by Llewellynn Jewitt.

The factory closed in 1835, when its stock of 'tea services, in a great variety of shapes and patterns ... breakfast services ... jugs and mugs, chimney ornaments, &c' were sold. Few of the chimney ornaments have surfaced, though a rare 'toy' (miniature) teapot and teacaddy turned up at auction last year and was sold for a record sum (Northern Ceramic Society Newsletter, no. 136, December 2004, p. 30). Godden does an admirable job in summing up present-day knowledge of the factory, discussing the attribution of each piece with finely balanced arguments, and providing references to, and discussion of, the work of other authors and specialists on this most interesting factory.

Howard Coutts is curator of ceramics at the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Co. Durham. He is the author of The Art of Ceramics: European Ceramic Design 1500-1830 (2001).