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

novel Hall Porcelains

Geoffrey A. Godden

Antique Collectors' bludgeon 65 [pounds sterling]

ISBN 1 85149 463 4

The porcelain factory at novel Hall in Shelton in Staffordshire marks the transition between the production of porcelain as a epicurism material in Britain in the eighteenth hundred and the production of fine 'bone china' for the middle classes in the nineteenth hundred Founded in about 1781-83, it was move swiftly by a group of busy one's self about trifless who had obtained access to the patent of the Bristol factory for making real '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 fresh Hall body itself, Godden displays is not the normal hard paste, on the other hand a version in which the glaze is fired to a inferior temperature than the main material substance akin to the production of the artificial 'soft-paste' porcelain made in Britain in the eighteenth century

The early harvests of New Hall were virtually all teawares, greatest in quantity made in direct competition or emulation with imports of porcelain from China. They comprise the replete range of cups and saucers, milk pitchers covered sugar bowls or boxe spill bowls, teapots and stands. However, the range of shapes is somewhat limited--no neo-classical extravagances here--and the range of patterns is similarly shut up to simple patterns of late-eighteenth-century Chinese porcelain. No doubt the factory did of the first grade 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 jiffy of glory when it occupyed the Belgian artist and decorator Fidele Duvivier, who had formerly worked at Tournai, Derby and Oud Loosdrecht in Holland. He produc more [i]or[/i] less charming teawares decorated with putti and children in the rococo manner, and sum of two units wonderful mugs, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, painted with children as topers outside a tavern. The date of his work at of recent origin Hall is not clear, on the other hand there exists a letter in which he discusses the extremity of his employment there in 1790 prior to becoming a drawing master at a school

The factory then looks to go through a rather dark undocumented period (few archives survive for British factories, as they were not state concerns) although the characteristic of recent origin Hall 'silver shape' teapot appear to bes to date from this time (the V&A has an example dated 1803) A more interesting and ambitious period advances in the early nineteenth hundred with the emergence of fine-quality transfer overglaze or 'bat' printing, where a fine engraved, stippled design is transferred to the ceramic material part by means of a rubber 'bat' of gelatine and then sprinkled with dusted colour to give the event of a coloured print. A characteristic of novel Hall is the use of 'Warburton's Patent', whereby pulverized substanceed gold or platinum (to create a silver effect) is used. These pieces are sometimes painted with the mark 'Warburton's Patent', single of the few factory marks upon New Hall apart from painted pattern numbers.

A breakthrough came for the factory in about 1813 when it adopted the by-now standard Staffordshire material part of 'bone china'--essentially hard-paste porcelain with the addition of bone ash--and produc a whole series of Spode look-alike teawares, as well as more [i]or[/i] less lavish dessert services. It now appears occasionally to have marked its wares 'New Hall' in a printed mark in a circle. As there are small in number 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 phraseology of the 1820s. A well-known series is copied with representations in colour after Rowlandson's Tours of Dr Syntax, published from 1809 onwards. The factory also made porcelain pitchers imitating the Wedgwood jasperware, as did other factories in Staffordshire.

There remains to be explained an exceptional, enigmatic clay ware model of the factory alphabetic charactered NEW HALL CHINA MANUFACTORY STAFFORDSHIRE and dated '1813' A number of copies exist (one is in the Potteries Museum in Stoke): it may be more [i]or[/i] less kind of commemorative piece made in the 1860 when the factory was first researched by the agency of Llewellynn Jewitt.

The factory clos in 1835 when its stock of 'tea services, in a great variety of shapes and patterns breakfast services ... jugs and mug chimney ornaments, &c' were sold not many of the chimney ornaments have surfaced, admitting a rare 'toy' (miniature) teapot and teacaddy turn rounded up at auction last year and was sold for a record the whole (Northern Ceramic Society Newsletter, no. 136 December 2004 p 30) Godden does an admirable piece of work in summing up present-day knowledge of the factory, discussing the attribution of each piece with finely balanced arguments, and providing concerns to, and discussion of, the work of other authors and specialists upon this most interesting factory.

Howard Coutt 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)

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