Roman Road LDN received an in-depth and well-researched comment on the article ‘The forgotten history of the Bow Porcelain Factory.’
The author explained that he and his wife, who live in New Zealand, took an interest in Bow Porcelain 25 years ago. The couple have extensively researched the origins of Bow Porcelain and concluded that Bow is much more important to the English ceramic tradition than was previously thought. Dr Ramsay noted that the London ceramics community were averse to and upset by the pair’s research.
By chance, I was looking through the internet and this account ‘The forgotten history of the Bow Porcelain Factory’ [published on Roman Road LDN], caught my eye. In particular, the claim that the origins of that concern are (present tense) shrouded in mystery. While there has been mystery associated with the Bow concern, I suggest that this alleged mystery is now a good deal less than it was a quarter of a century ago.
Back then the millstone syndrome ruled supreme, namely that Bow produced a soft-paste bone ash porcelain only and no earlier than c. 1747. Anything attributed to Bow prior to 1747 was experimental, non-commercial, or not worth a tin of fish—my how things have changed.
In this account, the author claims that excavations have unveiled the forgotten history of what was once England’s largest china manufacturer. Yes, excavations have greatly enhanced our understanding of Bow but it has been science more than anything that has drilled back prior to 1747 and shone a light into this ‘mystery’.
Back in 2003 when I and colleagues argued for the Trinity, namely Bow, the 1744 patent specification, and ‘A’-marked porcelains, there was considerable anguish and opposition expressed in that such a claim cut across the stricture of Charleston and Mallet (1971) that there was no known form, potting, or decoration that linked these 1744 patent wares with the porcelains of the Frye virgin earth patent of 1749.
Likewise, such a claim contradicted the assertion by Bernard Watney (1973) that the Cherokee clay-based recipe was almost certainly unworkable. I have to smile in that some 20 years on we are now advised as fact that Cherokee clay was used to make porcelains at Bow. I am indeed delighted.
I do have to comment, however, on the claim that there is little recorded evidence of much porcelain being made under this patent. Here maybe the author should call into the V&A and see the fine collection of these porcelains on show. Daniels et al. (2013) have calculated that there are of the surviving pieces from 9 ‘high style’ tea services and 10 from stock pattern services were identified. In 1994 Mallet was able to add another 3 services, two ‘high-style’ and one stock pattern, making a total of 22 known separate tea services.
With the addition of a ‘high-style’ cane handle and snuffbox, the total number of extant pieces of ‘A’marked porcelain was 34. Since then about a dozen more pieces have emerged, but apart from a cane handle and two snuffboxes in the ‘high-style’, we have not seen these so are currently unaware of their shapes or patterns. Therefore, of course, we do not know whether they will increase the total number of services or add to those already identified.
Considering the short period of commercial production such an amount of porcelain can hardly be dismissed as of ‘little recorded evidence’. This desire to marginalise what is one of the great contributions to the Western porcelain tradition is matched by the constant attempts to dismiss and question what must be your most important ceramic document (1744 patent specification) leading my wife and I to record (Ramsay and Ramsay, 2017) that,
Never in the history of English ceramic studies has such a landmark document been so marginalised and/or dismissed by so many, for so long, based on such unfortunate reasoning.
In the case of the products of this patent, we have one expert in 2024 declaring these porcelains to be little more than a ‘bubble’ and the current author of ‘Forgotten history’ that there is little recorded evidence for such porcelains. A good summary of where we are with regard to the 1744 patent porcelains can be found in Edwards et al, (2022) where the history, aspects of connoisseurship, and composition of these porcelains are discussed.
More recently in Ramsay and Edwards (2024) eight primary source documents are listed and examined with regard to these porcelains; hardly indicative of little recorded evidence. In fact, Ramsay and Edwards go further to observe that there appears to be more primary evidence in existence with regard to the 1744 patent porcelains and the early years of Bow than for any other early English porcelain factory. Here I add that a ninth record of early Bow and its 1744 patent porcelains has just been recognised.
I comment on the claim made that Heylyn and Frye commenced experimentation on these patent porcelains in 1744. This is an old chestnut that keeps being repeated in the literature suggesting that Heylyn and Frye got out of bed one morning and by dinner time fully fledged porcelain examples were being produced. Both Frye and Heylyn were ‘front’ men and almost certainly had little to do with the experimentation and development at Bow that went back into the 1730s.
The driving force behind this experimentation were wealthy backers such as Aldermen of London the Royal Society, and potters, especially from Staffordshire. Ramsay and Edwards (2024) give recognition to four such potters, namely John Brittain, Thomas Hammersley, William Ball, and Richard Meir, but to my concern we overlooked the role that John Astbury must have played, in particular with regard to the development of slip-cast techniques at Bow.
The origins of the Si-Al-Ca recipe had a gestation period of some 70 years, not one year, having been traced back by Ramsay and Ramsay (2017) and Ramsay and Edwards (2024) to the 17th C and the Burghley House jars and arguably John Dwight. Initially, the recipe used including at early Bow, was a triaxial formulation but by around the late 1730s Bow converted this to a biaxial formula which was recorded in the 1744 specification.
Of note is the Frye virgin earth recipe was filed in late 1749, not November 1748.
In summary, it now appears that the Bow porcelain concern has been greatly misunderstood. Part of this reason has been through the exclusion of science and the dominance of form and decoration in arriving at such conclusions. In fact, Bow was operating much earlier than given credit for, producing a range of recipe types including three hard-paste formulations.
The first was the 1744 patent specification using Cherokee clay, the second was the production of an English bone china body some 50 years before Spode, and the third a very hard-paste body based on a secondary clay, most likely a Dorset ball clay (Ramsay and Edwards, 2024). In addition, both Ramsay and Ramsay (2007) and Daniels (2007) have argued that Bow utilised soapstone in the early-mid 1740s.
This view has been hotly contested in the literature though we note that John Mallet (2024) now accepts this assertion that early Bow produced soapstone porcelains. The upshot of this acceptance is that the distance between Bow using soapstone and Mallet’s opposition to Bow producing the George II busts and brackets is now wafer thin. Science is indeed illuminating new areas in our attempts to understand early Bow.
September 18th, 2024 Dr W R H Ramsay
Charleston, R.J. & Mallet, J.V. G., 1971. A problematical group of 18th century porcelains. Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle, 8, pp. 80-121.
Daniels P., 2007. The Origin & Development of Bow Porcelain 1730-1747 Including the Participation of the Royal Society, Andrew Duche, and the American Contribution. Resurgat Publishers, Oxon. 343 pp.
Daniels, Pat, Ross & Gael Ramsay, 2013. The George II Busts and Historic Wall Brackets: The Motivation, Symbolism and Technology by which the Models can be dated to 1745-6 and Attributed to the First Bow Factory in Middlesex. Resurgat Publishers, Oxon, 83 pp.
H. G. M. Edwards, W. H. Jay & W. R. H. Ramsay, ‘High-fired early English porcelains of the ‘A’-marked group, east London (c. 1744): A Raman spectroscopy and electron microscopy compositional study’, Journal of Raman Spectroscopy 53:4 (2022), pp. 785- 809.
Mallet J. V. G., 2024. Two ‘A’ marked porcelain saucers enter the Ashmolean. Oxford Ceramics Group, Newsletter, 59, June 2024, pp. 26-33.
Ramsay, W. R. H., & Ramsay, E. G., 2007. A classification of Bow porcelain from first patent to closure: c. 1743-1774. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, 119(1), pp. 1-68.
Ramsay, W. R. H., & E. G. Ramsay, 2017. The evolution and compositional development of English porcelains from the 16thC to Lund’s Bristol c. 1750 and Worcester c. 1752 – the golden chain (Invercargill, New Zealand).
Ramsay, W. R. H., & Edwards H. G. M., 2024. New insights into the porcelains of William Reid & Co., Liverpool, and their prior links to London, c. 1744-1748. J. Northern Ceramics Society, pp. 101-135.
Ramsay, W. R. H., Gabszewicz, A., & Ramsay, E. G., 2003. The chemistry of ‘A’-marked porcelain and their relationship to the Heylyn and Frye patent of 1744. Transactions English Ceramic Circle, 18(2), pp. 264-283.
Watney, B. M. 1973. English Blue & White Porcelain of the 18th Century. Faber and Faber Ltd., London. 145 pp.