The model of the Bow factory, we are told, was taken from that at Canton, in China. It would be interesting to know to what building the reference is made, for it is doubtful whether porcelain was ever made at Canton. In any case, the name given to the factory, ‘The New Canton Works,’ is interesting. Here in the east of London, one was then, as now, perceptibly nearer to China and the East Indies than at Chelsea. The river and the docks are at hand, and there is indeed only one stage—a long one, it is true—between us and Canton. So at Bow we find the Oriental decoration more prevalent and surviving longer than elsewhere.
The outturn of the kilns, like that of Chelsea, was sold periodically by auction, but the sales took place in the city for the most part, and the principal warehouse was in Cornhill. Though so difficult to identify nowadays, a large quantity of porcelain must have been produced by the Bow factory during the thirty years of its independent existence. Like its rival at Chelsea, the works had many ups and downs, and Crowther, the proprietor, became bankrupt in 1763. Compared with Chelsea, however, the bulk of the ware produced was no doubt of a common and cheap kind. Sprimont, in his ‘Case of the Undertaker,’ says somewhat contemptuously, ‘The chief endeavours at Bow have been towards making a more ordinary ware for common use.’ This is, of course, the dictum of a rival, but the Bow firm, in their advertisements, only claim to provide ‘china suitable for gentlemen’s kitchens, for private families and taverns.’
There has been the widest difference of opinion as to the actual specimens of porcelain that may with certainty be classed as the produce of the kilns at Bow. The earliest dated pieces are of a very modest kind—certain little cylindrical ink-pots. There is one in the collection formerly at Jermyn Street, with the inscription ‘Made at New Canton, 1751’; another in a private collection is dated a year earlier. The execution is rough, and the hastily coloured decoration of flowers is in the Japanese style. Some little time after this, in 1753, we find proof that the kilns were turning out much more ware than the proprietor could find painters to decorate.226 They advertise in a Birmingham newspaper for ‘painters in the blue and white potting way and enamelers in china-ware’; also for ‘painters brought up in the Snuff-box way, Japanning, Fan-painting, etc.’ They are at the same time in search of persons ‘who can model small figures in clay neatly.’ Such advertisements seem to come from a commercial house with a large but perhaps irregular outturn. Sprimont would probably have exercised more care in the selection of his artists.
There is a famous punch-bowl in the British Museum which is above all the pièce justificative of the Bow porcelain works. On the inside of the cover of the box in which it is preserved is a long inscription, signed at the foot by T. Craft, and with the date 1790.227 Thomas Craft, formerly an enamel-painter at Bow, was probably at that time a very old man. This bowl, he tells us, was made at Bow about 1760, and painted by him ‘in what we used to call the old Japan taste, a taste at that time much esteemed by the then Duke of Argyle.’ This is interesting. Craft refers probably to the so-called ‘partridge and wheatsheaf’ style, and the duke was doubtless a collector of this ware, like his contemporaries at Chantilly and the Palais Royal. But the decoration of this bowl has unfortunately nothing Japanese about it, except to some degree in the colour of the enamels employed. The heavy wreaths made up of minute flowers, upon which Mr. Craft tells us that he expended two dwts. of gold and about a fortnight of his time, take their inspiration rather from Meissen. (Compare the wreaths, Pl. xlv. 2.) The works, he continues, which employed ninety painters and about two hundred turners, throwers, etc.,228 had now, in 1790, ‘like Shakespeare’s cloud-capt towers, etc.,’ shared the fate of ‘the famous cities of Troy, Carthage, etc.’ The site was occupied by a manufactory of turpentine and some small tenements. Mr. Craft, however, tells us that he never used this punch-bowl but in particular respect of his company, and he hopes that those to whom it may pass may be equally abstemious. It is at present in the charge of the trustees of the British Museum.
Many of the more elaborate figures and highly finished vases classed as ‘Bow’ in the Schreiber collection at South Kensington are now regarded by most specialists as the production, some of the Derby works, and others of the Chelsea and even the Worcester kilns. In view of the uncertainty and difference of opinion about the ware that is to be attributed to Bow, it is important to note the physical qualities of undoubted specimens. Professor Church lays stress upon the general thickness of the ware, the remarkable translucency of the thinner parts, and upon the fact that the transmitted light is of a somewhat yellowish tint, not greenish, as in the Worcester porcelain. The glaze, though nearly white, is of a pale straw colour, and it tends to accumulate round the reliefs; it contains much lead, and is liable to become iridescent and discoloured (English Porcelain, p. 31). I would add that a majority of the undoubted examples—I rely especially upon those collected by the late Sir A. W. Franks, now in the British Museum—are distinguished by a certain dirty and speckled appearance of the surface of the glaze. I think that the Bow china has been less influenced than other of our wares by French and German examples. Apart from the Oriental decoration of some of the earlier pieces, it is on the whole a very English ware.
PLATE XLV. 1—CHELSEA, COLOURED ENAMELS
2—BOW, COLOURED ENAMELS
The process of transfer-printing, which had been first applied to china by Sadler of Liverpool about the year 1750, and which had been in use at perhaps as early a date on the enamels of Battersea, where Hancock was working at this time, was employed a few years later at Bow.229 A preliminary outline was sometimes printed under the glaze, and this subsequently enlivened by enamel colours laid on by hand, as we see on some barbarously painted dishes with Chinese subjects in the British Museum. This transfer-printing is an essentially English process: it has since been carried round the world in the wake of our Staffordshire pottery, and the process has even been applied to porcelain in Japan. To the general adoption of this mechanical process, more than to any other cause, we may attribute the dying out of the school of artist-craftsmen who painted on china, and the extinction of all feeling for the decorative value of the designs applied to the ware.
I would call attention to some small figures in the collection formerly in the Geological Museum. These little statuettes are in a white glazed ware of a slightly greenish tint, and they are attributed to Bow. The ‘Draped Warrior’ and the ‘Seated Nuns’ appear to be taken from models of a considerably earlier period, and their artistic merit is undeniable.
John Bacon, the fashionable sculptor of George iii.’s time, is said to have found employment, when young, both as a modeller and painter of porcelain. He was certainly apprenticed in 1755 to a Mr. Crispe of Bow Churchyard, the proprietor of some pottery-works at Lambeth, and he may very likely have worked for Crowther, at Bow, after the expiration of his apprenticeship.
A dagger or sword with one or more dots near the hilt, associated with an anchor, is the mark especially characteristic of the ware made at Bow (Pl. e. 71), but much porcelain attributed to this factory carries no mark. A monogram formed of the letters T and F found on some early ware is perhaps to be referred to Thomas Frye, but the Worcester factory also used this mark (Pl. e. 72).
Longton Hall.—It has lately been recognised that porcelain was made in the Staffordshire potteries, probably as early as the middle of the century.230 This was at Longton Hall, in the borough of Stoke-upon-Trent. From an advertisement in a Birmingham paper (July 27, 1752) we learn that W. Littler and Co. were ready to supply ‘a great variety of ornamental porcelain in the most fashionable and genteel taste.’ It was Mr. Nightingale, I think, who first traced certain pieces of china, marked with two L’s crossed (Pl. e. 81), to Littler’s factory. This porcelain had previously been attributed to Bow. The Longton Hall ware has no claim to any artistic merit. A crude blue is the prevailing ground colour, and the contorted shapes copy rudely the rococo of Sprimont’s Chelsea ware. The mouldings on the dishes and plates often take the form of leaves. Some of this porcelain is exceptionally thin compared with other English wares of this comparatively early period. The flower-painting on the reserved panels of the plates should, however, be noticed. The carefully executed bunches of roses, somewhat realistically treated, are perhaps the earliest specimens of a style very prevalent at a later time in England, one which found its most famous exponent in Billingsley’s work at Nantgarw and elsewhere. William Duesbury, a native of the district, was working at Longton Hall early in the fifties as a painter in enamel. Nothing is known of this factory after the year 1758.231 There is some reason to believe that it fell into the hands of Duesbury, but this is a disputed question. Professor Church has analysed several specimens of the Longton Hall china. It contains no bone-ash, and is in composition very close to the early Chelsea ware.
CHAPTER XXI
ENGLISH PORCELAIN—(continued)
THE SOFT PASTE OF DERBY, WORCESTER, CAUGHLEY, COALPORT, SWANSEA, NANTGARW, LOWESTOFT, LIVERPOOL, PINXTON, ROCKINGHAM, CHURCH GRESLEY, SPODE, AND BELLEEK
DERBY.—Porcelain of some kind was probably made at Derby not much later than the date of the first establishment of Frye’s works at Bow. Mr. Bemrose quotes entries from the work-book of Duesbury, which show that during the years 1751-53 he was busy enamelling the products not only of the ‘Chellsea and Bogh’ kilns, but that, although resident in London, he received work from Derby also. Indeed the price, eight shillings, that he got for enamelling ‘one pair of Darby figars large,’ is higher than his usual charge for painting the Chelsea statuettes (Bow, Chelsea, and Derby Porcelain).232
William Duesbury was a Staffordshire man. As early as the year 1742, when he was only seventeen, he was working in London as an enameller for weekly wages. This we know from his work-book, which has been preserved. It would be interesting to know what it was that he enamelled at this early date. From the same book we learn that in the years 1751-53 he was in London decorating china figures for the most part. These he distinguishes as Bow, or Bogh, Chellsea, Darby, and Staffordshire. In 1752 he paid a bill of £6, 19s. for colours, although at that time little gold was used by him. Among other entries in his work-book at this period we find the following note: ‘How to color the group, a gentleman Busing a Lady—gentlm a gold trimd cote, a pink wastcot crimson and trimd with gold and black breeches and socs, the lade a flourd sack with yellow robings, a black stomegar, her hare black, his wig powdrd.’ Each piece that he coloured is carefully noted, and the price that he obtained given. For instance, ‘pair of le Dresden figars,’ ‘Chellsea Nurs,’ ‘a pair of Baccosses,’ ‘a hartychoake.’233 We have already referred to Duesbury’s connection with Littler’s works,—we may note that his father was living at Longton Hall at this time.
In December 1756 there was a sale in London, by order of the ‘Derby Porcelain Manufactory,’ of figures, services, etc., ‘after the finest Dresden models.’ For some time the ‘Derby China Company’ sold their goods through their factor at ‘Oliver Cromwell’s Drawing-Room’ near the Admiralty. It would seem that in 1756 Duesbury entered into some kind of partnership, at Derby, with Heath and Planché, the first a banker and proprietor of pottery-works at Cockpit Hill, and the latter a ‘china-maker,’ of whom various more or less apocryphal stories are told. All we can safely say is that Planché had probably been working for some time at Derby as a modeller of figures.
In the year 1758 the Derby works were enlarged and the number of workmen doubled, and this change has been coupled with the closing of Littler’s factory at Longton Hall about the same time. But from this date to the year 1769, all that we know of the Derby factory is derived from a few advertisements in London papers. It is indeed a very remarkable fact that, in spite of the most persevering researches—for how thoroughly the ground has been gleaned we can judge by looking through the elaborate works of Haslem, Bemrose, and the late Mr. Nightingale—we can hardly point to a single specimen of porcelain made at Derby before the year 1770, nor do we know of any mark that can be assigned to an earlier period than this. Can it be that up to this time the works were chiefly occupied in copying the wares, and perhaps the marks, not only of Dresden, but also of Chelsea and Bow?
When the Chelsea factory and its contents were sold in 1769, it was Duesbury, and not the Derby China Company, who was the purchaser. After the year 1775, when the Bow works were also purchased, he had, with the exception of the Worcester manufactory, practically no rival in the field.
We may take the year 1770 as the turning-point in the history of English porcelain. In France, by this time, the rococo of Louis xv.’s reign was already giving way to the simpler, and in part more classical, forms that distinguish the next reign, for it is common knowledge that the style known as Louis xvi. came into vogue several years before the accession of that king. In England the change can be best traced in the work of the silversmith, seeing that in such work there can be no uncertainty as to the date. Already, before the end of the sixties, we find in the silver plate then made outlines formed of simple curves and even straight lines replacing the troubled rococo scrolls, and by the year 1770 the new classical forms have carried the whole field. And in like manner the china made by Duesbury, both at Chelsea and Derby, follows the new fashion.
But the vases bearing the Chelsea-Derby mark of an anchor crossing the down-stroke of the letter D (Pl. e. 73) differ from those made by Sprimont not only in outline. A new scheme of decoration has come in, one that continued with no radical change for the next fifty years and more. Let us take the Chelsea-Derby vase in the Jones collection—it stands in company with several others of the Sprimont rococo type. Notice the oblique fluted mouldings of the upper part (a motif taken directly from the silversmith), which are accentuated by deep blue and gold lines on a white ground (this is a scheme of decoration above all characteristic of Derby china). The reserved panels on the body of the vase are painted with pastoral subjects. Here there is little change, but around these panels the ground is completely covered with flowers of various kinds—each species can be made out, but full-blown double roses predominate. These full-blown roses are a note that distinguishes English porcelain from this time onwards. As they become larger, and occupy a more prominent place, the painting loses all trace of decorative feeling. Billingsley carried them in his wanderings to all the porcelain factories of England, and we are finally landed in the monstrosities of Rockingham and the insipidities of Nantgarw.
One point we have omitted to mention in our description of the Chelsea-Derby vase at South Kensington. The handles, winged figures somewhat classically treated, are of unglazed ware. This is an example of the famous Derby biscuit, or bisque, as it is sometimes called, which we now know was made as early as 1771. The greatest care was taken in the preparation of this biscuit ware; any piece with the slightest defect was rejected. The material allows of a sharpness and high finish which would be lost in the thick covering of the glazed ware. The paste in many of the examples has acquired a somewhat shiny surface, as if covered with a skin of glaze. The best known specimens date from the last years of the century, when Spengler, a modeller from Zurich, was engaged by the second Duesbury. In them we see exemplified that mixture of the sentimental and the pseudo-classical so much admired at this time. The shepherd with his dog (there is an example at South Kensington) is taken from a Roman relief, the head perhaps from an Antinous. The shepherdess has been reading Richardson, if not Jean Jacques, and they both take life very seriously.
We find, however, the Chelsea-Derby mark on enamelled figures that differ little from the earlier and more frivolous type. These survivals, as it were, of the rococo school stand no longer upon a scroll pediment, but on a rocky ground, amid careful reproductions of natural objects, stumps of trees, shells, or what not. The colours, too, have become somewhat stronger; the pale, greenish blue of the earlier pieces is replaced by a fuller turquoise hue.
It was at this time, or a little later, that the process of ‘casting’ was introduced for these statuettes. This was a process of English origin, though it is now extensively used at Sèvres and elsewhere abroad. We have described the various modifications of this plan in a previous chapter (p. 25). In the case of these statuettes, the figure is first modelled in tough clay; the head and limbs are then cut off. A plaster-of-Paris mould is then made of each of the separate parts, a cream-like slip is poured into the mould and quickly poured out before all the water is absorbed, a layer of the paste remaining on the sides of the mould. This layer is detached when sufficiently dry; the pieces are then joined together by means of the same slip, and the outline of the figure sharpened with a modelling tool.234 Porcelain made by this casting process is not so dense as that made on the old system; its specific gravity is appreciably lower. The moulding or repairing knife may be, to some extent, replaced by the use of a brush, but a less sharp outline is obtained in this case. In the furnace these figures have to be supported by an elaborate scaffolding of props, and the shrinkage of the clay during the firing is another source of difficulty.
In the British Museum may be seen a garniture of vases, of a type very characteristic of the early Chelsea-Derby time. A pale turquoise ground is overlaid with white flowers in low relief. This is but a modification of the German schnee-ball decoration. Somewhat later the pâte tendre of Sèvres is evidently taken as a model, as in the cabaret which was given by Queen Charlotte to one of her maids of honour. This ‘equipage,’ to give it its English name, has also found its way into our national collection. It has the rare jonquil ground with a border of blue and gold.
For smaller objects, for cups, saucers, and plates, a simpler style of decoration is in favour. The wreaths of little blue flowers, forget-me-nots, and corn-flowers (the French barbeau), relieved with touches of green and gold, remind one of the similar ware made at Sèvres, and more especially at some of the smaller Parisian factories during the early years of Louis xvi.
The elaborately decorated ‘old Japan’ was much copied at Derby, but so unintelligently that the patterns degenerated into meaningless forms, known as ‘rock Japan,’ ‘witches Japan,’ and even ‘Grecian Japan’! This was the beginning of a barbarous style of decoration, in vogue in the Staffordshire potteries at a later time both for porcelain and earthenware, in which scattered members of the original scheme are jumbled together at the whim of the ignorant painter.235
The subsequent vicissitudes of the Derby factory may be traced in the marks in use at successive dates. The combined anchor and D was apparently employed at Chelsea as long as the factory existed, but at Derby a crown with jewelled bows was introduced in 1773 (Pl. e. 75), perhaps on the occasion of some velléité of royal patronage, although we have no definite evidence of anything of the kind.236
Somewhat later we find two batons crossed, with three dots in each angle (similar to the ‘billiard’ mark on some Dutch porcelain) inserted on Derby porcelain between the crown and the letter D (Pl. e. 74).
William Duesbury died in 1786. His son, the second William, shortly before his death in 1796, took into partnership Michael Kean, a miniature-painter, and now a K was combined with the D on the mark. In 1813 the factory was leased to Robert Bloor by the third William Duesbury, and after that time we hear no more of that family in connection with Derby. Bloor conducted the works on ‘business principles’ until his death in 1846. If for nothing else, his name should be remembered in connection with a wonderfully brilliant claret, or rouge d’or, that he succeeded in making. There is a vase with this ground in the Jermyn Street collection which has excited the admiration of foreign experts. Bloor used the old mark, in red, up to 1831 at least. Before that time, however, the crown had lost the jewels upon its bows. At this period china-clay and china-stone were more and more used, and the porcelain became harder and somewhat opaque. As a consequence of the higher melting, or rather softening, points of both body and glaze, the enamels lost something of their brilliancy and lustre.
The present porcelain factory at Derby cannot strictly be regarded as a direct descendant of the old works on the Nottingham Road, whose career came to an end after Bloor’s death in 1846.
Worcester.—We have seen how William Duesbury, an obscure and illiterate painter of china images from the Staffordshire potteries, had after the absorption of the factories of Chelsea and Bow (as well probably as that established by Littler in Duesbury’s own country) become a kind of china king.
There was one factory, however, skilfully managed and established on a firm financial basis which remained entirely independent of him. Of the origin of this factory—the Worcester China Works—we have, quite exceptionally, a full record. These works, we may add, are also exceptional in another respect—they have had a continuous history from the year of their foundation to the present day, that is to say for more than a century and a half. Mr. R. W. Binns has in his possession a copy of the articles of association ‘for carrying on the Worcester Tonquin manufacture.’237 They are dated January 4, 1751. The forty-five shares of £100 each were divided among fifteen original partners, of whom two claim to possess the secret, art, mystery, and process of making porcelain. These two were John Wall, doctor of medicine, and William Davis, apothecary. We have no record of the preliminary experiments said to have been made by these two men in a laboratory over the apothecary’s shop, nor do we know for how long these experiments had been carried on. Two workmen, however, who had already been employed by them for some time, were retained by the new company and well paid as an inducement to keep secret the process of manufacture. It was the apothecary Davis, probably, who brought the scientific knowledge, but Dr. Wall also, besides being a portrait-painter who had acquired some renown at Oxford and in his native town (he had made designs for painted glass among other things), was an energetic, practical man with some scientific pretensions; nor must we forget the two workmen, who probably had a good deal to say in the matter.
A site for the new factory was found in Warmstry House, a fine old mansion that had belonged to the Windsor family, situated some hundred yards to the north of the cathedral, and the kilns were erected in the grounds which sloped down to the river. The biscuit kiln and the glazing-kiln were enclosed in long roofed buildings apparently without conspicuous chimneys. Only the great kiln for the ‘segurs’ takes the conical shape that we associate with pottery-ovens.238 The pressing, modelling, and throwing galleries were established in the old house itself, where there was also a ‘secret room.’
The little that we know of the composition of the paste, or rather pastes, for there were two or more varieties used for the fine and common ware respectively, is derived from a paper (now in the possession of Mr. Binns) drawn up in 1764 by Richard Holdship, one of the original partners. In that year Holdship (he was an engraver who had been associated with the introduction of the transfer process) became bankrupt, and now entered the service of Duesbury and Heath at Derby. From this paper we learn that the ordinary paste used at Worcester contained about two-thirds of a glassy material (a mixture of flint-glass, crown-glass, and a specially prepared frit), and one-third of a soapy rock, that is to say of a steatite, from Cornwall. The composition of the glaze is interesting:—it contained, besides the usual constituents, 14 per cent. of ‘foreign china,’ 2½ per cent. of ‘tin-ashes,’ and 0·3 per cent. of smalt. We should add that on the whole the glaze of Worcester china is somewhat harder than that of other English soft-paste wares. Along with this recipe is ‘a process for making porcelain ware, without soapy rock or glass, in imitation of Nanquin, being an opaque body.’ This ‘Nanquin’ ware was made by mixing bone-ash with an equal weight of a very silicious frit: to the mixture 8 per cent. of Barnstaple clay and a small quantity of smalt were added.
We learn from other sources (e.g. Borlase’s History of Cornwall, 1758) that the agents of the Worcester company were busy searching for and purchasing steatite rock, especially at Mullion, in the Lizard district.239
Of the porcelain produced during the first sixteen years of the Worcester factory we know a little more than of that of the corresponding time at Derby. This was an eclectic period: the wares (and the marks also) of Chantilly, Meissen, and Chelsea were copied. It was the Oriental models, however, that were most in favour, especially the blue and white of China, small pieces of which were imitated with some success. For the enamelled ware, the brocaded Imari, our ‘old Japan,’ rather than the older Kakiyemon ware, served as a type. At this time, too, a strange attempt was made to copy the marks of the Chinese porcelain. We can trace, sometimes, the well-known characters of the Ming dynasty (‘great’ and ‘bright’) (Pl. e. 76). In other cases Arabic numerals are arranged so as roughly to resemble a Chinese character. The idea was probably taken from old Delft ware on which similar marks are found, as also occasionally on Bow and on some Salopian porcelain. Again, we find a degenerate seal character, perhaps derived from the popular Japanese mark Fu (happiness), taking a form something like the design of a Union Jack (Pl. e. 78). The decoration of the Chinese famille rouge was also copied—we find it, for example, on the edges of little white cups and bowls with basket-work designs in low relief, of which there are some specimens at South Kensington.
To an early period, also, belongs the ware decorated in black (or less often in lilac), with figures and landscapes, ‘transferred’ by a variety of ingenious processes, which we need not describe here, from an engraved copper-plate. Used before this time on enamels at Battersea and on earthenware at Liverpool, it was with the ‘jet enamelled’ ware of Worcester, printed from the plates specially made for the purpose by Robert Hancock (who had previously been employed at Battersea under the Frenchman Ravenet), that the new process was above all associated. Here, for the first time perhaps in its history, porcelain was ‘made to speak,’ to use Napoleon’s phrase. On it the hero of the day was immortalised: in 1757 we find Frederick the Great, crowned by a winged Genius; at a later time the Marquis of Granby and the elder Pitt. It is Hancock, it would seem, that we must regard as the capo scuola of another ‘school of decoration,’ one which, spreading at a later time to Staffordshire, has been carried to all parts of the world where transfer-printed English crockery has penetrated. The basis of this decoration is a classical ruin—generally a fragment of the entablature of a Roman temple supported on a few columns; add to this a pointed building something between an obelisk and a pyramid,240 the whole enclosed in a framework of conventional trees. Upon how many millions of jugs and basins was this pattern repeated, in black, in green, and in lilac! At some future day, by the study of potsherds so decorated collected in many lands, an archæologist may be able to trace the course of English commerce in the nineteenth century, and to draw strange inferences as to the state of the arts at that time in our country.
This ‘jet-enamelled’ transfer was printed over the glaze; sometimes, to enliven the effect, other colours, painted by hand, were added, with disastrous results. In the blue and white printed ware, on the other hand, the cobalt pigment is applied under the glaze. The paste of this transfer-printed porcelain is often of good quality and very translucent, and the finer earlier specimens are much sought after by collectors. We have seen that at least from the cultur-historisch point of view this printed china is not without interest.
After 1763 Sprimont’s factory at Chelsea was only working at irregular intervals. Some time later, about 1768, many of the enamel-painters migrated to Worcester, where capable artists seem to have been in great demand. It is usual to attribute to this migration a new scheme of decoration that came into vogue at Worcester in the seventies. This was the period of the vases with deep blue grounds and panels brilliantly painted with flowers and bright-plumaged tropical birds. The bleu du roi ground (we must remember that, like the similar grounds at Chelsea and Longport, this pigment was painted sous couverte) is often covered with the salmon-scales in a deeper tint so characteristic of the period; at other times it is replaced by a poudré blue. The hand of the Chelsea artist is to be recognised in the decoration of the panels, but the vases are generally of simple contours, often octagonal and, on the whole, following Chinese shapes. It is this richly decorated ware, produced especially between 1770 and 1780, which now commands such extravagant prices in the London market.