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59-514: The Lowestoft Porcelain Factory was a soft-paste porcelain factory on Crown Street (then Bell Lane) in Lowestoft, Suffolk , England, which was active from 1757 to 1802. It mostly produced "useful wares" such as pots, teapots, and jugs, with shapes copied from silverwork or from Bow and Worcester porcelain. The factory, built on the site of an existing pottery or brick kiln, was later used as

118-454: A brewery and malt kiln. Most of its remaining buildings were demolished in 1955. Lowestoft collectors divide the factory's products into three distinct periods: Early Lowestoft c. 1756 – c. 1761, Middle-Period c. 1761 – c. 1768 and Late-Period c. 1768 to factory closure in 1802. All told, the factory was in production for longer than any English soft-paste porcelain producer other than Royal Worcester and Royal Crown Derby . Geographically, it

177-486: A cup of cold water in, followed by some boiling water "and give it a shake round", to warm the pot before actually making the tea. Not surprisingly, Duesbury sought a formula that avoided this characteristic, and at some point after 1800 his successors introduced one closer to bone china . However, as other factories making this change found, the harder formulae did not take overglaze enamel paints as well, being both less attractive in appearance, and prone to crazing in

236-445: A firm texture unlike any other. The glaze often shows a fine satin-like pitting of the surface that helps to distinguish it from the brilliant shiny glaze of Mennecy, which is otherwise similar. The heavy build of the pieces is also characteristic and is saved from clumsiness by a finer sense of mass, revealed in the subtly graduated thickness of wall and a delicate shaping of edges." Louis Henry de Bourbon, prince de Condé established

295-492: A hard-paste firing temperature. They were called "soft paste" (after the French "pâte tendre") either because the material is softer in the kiln, and prone to "slump", or their firing temperatures are lower compared with hard-paste porcelain, or, more likely, because the finished products actually are far softer than hard-paste, and early versions were much easier to scratch or break, as well as being prone to shatter when hot liquid

354-467: A painter at the factory and later the manager from c. 1780, also had his own workshop in the town where he decorated pieces "in the white" from elsewhere. The Chinese pieces may still be called "Chinese Lowestoft", or "Oriental Lowestoft" in the United States. The start of the factory is somewhat unclear. Robert Browne (d. 1771) was the manager, with other partners, of which Philip Walker (d. 1803)

413-453: A polychrome that utilizes a bright brick red. After 1770 transfer printing was used. Some figures were made, mostly in the 1780s, of musicians, putti , and animals, but these are all rare. The Lowestoft body paste contained bone ash , and is similar to that of Bow; probably a former worker at Bow was employed when the factory began. Occasionally there can be difficulties telling the two apart, usually with blue and white pieces. The quality of

472-547: A portrait painter, took out a patent on a porcelain containing bone ash. This was the first bone china ; only much later, around 1794, was the formula perfected by Josiah Spode , and then soon near-universally adopted in England. But bone ash was frequently an ingredient in English soft-paste. Remarkably little hard-paste porcelain has ever been made in England, and bone china remains the vast majority of English production to

531-448: A soft-paste factory on the grounds of his château de Chantilly in 1730; Chantilly porcelain continued to be made after his death in 1740. A soft-paste factory was opened at Mennecy by François Barbin in 1750. The Vincennes porcelain factory was established in 1740 under the supervision of Claude-Humbert Gérin, who had previously been employed at Chantilly. The factory moved to larger premises at Sèvres in 1756. A superior soft-paste

590-596: A source of kaolin. In France kaolin was only found in Limousin in 1768, and Sèvres produced both types from 1769, before finally dropping soft-paste in 1804. In England there was a movement in a different direction, as Spode's formula for bone china , developed in the 1790s, was adopted by most other factories by about 1820. By that point little soft-paste porcelain was being made anywhere, and little hard-paste in England, with Nantgarw (to 1820) and Swansea in Wales among

649-683: A standard book by the Victorian expert William Chaffers allocated to Lowestoft types of Chinese export porcelain that had been produced in large quantities (far more than the small Lowestoft factory could have made). There were in fact some Chinese imitations (in hard-paste porcelain ) of Lowestoft porcelain shipped out to China by the British East India Company . It is also possible that some Chinese "blanks" were given overglaze decoration in Lowestoft. A Robert Allen, first

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708-455: A type of porcelain . It is weaker than "true" hard-paste porcelain , and does not require either its high firing temperatures or special mineral ingredients. There are many types, using a range of materials. The material originated in the attempts by many European potters to replicate hard-paste Chinese export porcelain , especially in the 18th century, and the best versions match hard-paste in whiteness and translucency, but not in strength. But

767-675: Is an engraving by John Setterington dated 1736 which shows people bathing and is popularly believed to be first evidence for bathing machines; however Devon claims this was a year earlier in 1735. Bathing machines were most common in the United Kingdom and parts of the British Empire with a British population, but were also used in France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, the United States, Mexico, and other nations. Prince Albert used one at Osborne Beach near Osborne House on

826-452: Is called "Hughes-type", after James Hughes, a modeller. Most of the surface has moulded low relief with small and rather vague plant shapes, leaves and garlands. Areas left with a flat surface are painted in underglaze blue in a Chinese style, typically a circular or oval space in the centre of the sides, where landscape scenes are painted, and borders at top and perhaps bottom, painted with floral or geometric motifs. These are mostly dated to

885-513: Is fraught with misconceptions", and various categories based on the analysis of the ingredients have been proposed instead. Some writers have proposed a "catch-all" category of "hybrid" porcelain, to include bone china and various "variant" bodies made at various times. This includes describing as "hybrid soft-paste porcelain" pieces made using kaolin but apparently not fired at a sufficiently high temperature to become true hard-paste, as with some 18th-century English and Italian pieces. At least in

944-538: The Isle of Wight , as did Queen Victoria , who used it to sketch and for bathing. She wrote about such an experience in her diary in July 1847. After the monarch's death, her machine was used as a chicken coop, but it was restored in the 1950s and put on display in 2012. According to a news report, "The queen's bathing machine was unusually ornate, with a front verandah and curtains which would conceal her until she had entered

1003-860: The Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences , the Philadelphia Museum of Art , the University of Michigan Museum of Art , the Harvard Art Museums , the Birmingham Museum of Art , the Brooklyn Museum , the Clark Art Institute , Colonial Williamsburg , and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston . Although small ordinary pieces can still be relatively cheap (from £100 up), the highest prices are fetched by

1062-406: The glaze , or paint losses. Experts are prone to rhapsodize over both the feel and appearance of various versions of soft paste bodies from several factories, both when plain and painted, and prefer such pieces to those in later, more practical, types of porcelain body. According to one expert, with a background in chemistry, "The definition of porcelain and its soft-paste and hard-paste varieties

1121-629: The 15th century onwards but its composition was little understood. Its translucency suggested that glass might be an ingredient, so many experiments combined clay with powdered glass (frit), including the porcelain made in Florence in the late 16th century under the patronage of the Medicis . In Venice there were experiments supposedly using opaque glass alone. German factories either made hard-paste from their foundation, like Meissen, Vienna, Ludwigsburg , Frankenthal and later factories, or obtained

1180-516: The 1860s, placing their street clothes into a raised compartment where they would remain dry. Probably all bathing machines had small windows, but one writer in the Manchester Guardian of May 26, 1906 considered them "ill-lighted" and wondered why bathing machines were not improved with a skylight . The machine would be wheeled or slid into the water. The most common machines had large wide wheels and were propelled in and out of

1239-460: The Chinese". The typical blue-painted Saint-Cloud porcelain, says Honey, "is one of the most distinct and attractive of porcelains, and not the least part of its charm lies in the quality of the material itself. It is rarely of a pure white, but the warm yellowish or ivory tone of the best wares of the period is sympathetic and by no means a shortcoming; and while actually very soft and glassy, it has

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1298-460: The European product, Chinese porcelain began with hard-paste, and it is common to regard all Chinese production as hard-paste, until bone china began to be made there in the 20th century. However, a classification of "Chinese soft-paste porcelain" is often recognised by museums and auction-houses, though its existence may be denied by others. It refers to pieces of Chinese porcelain, mostly from

1357-492: The factory and buy. In 1772 a doctor on a day trip from Yarmouth with friends put in his diary: "After dinner visited the china manufactory carried on there. Most of it is rather ordinary. The Painting branch is done by women...". In 1777 a Thomas Wale and friends "saw the china ware fabrick, etc, and all of us bought some of it. Saw ye hanging gardens, and ye fine prospect of ye sea. Excellent bathing-machines , etc. ....". A persistent "notorious mistake" in several editions of

1416-416: The factory's products. Many pieces are in a pattern, itself derived from Chinese models, known as "Redgrave" (after a family with several workers at the factory), with paeonies and rocks. This exists in several types, some with their own names such as "House pattern" and "Two-Bird pattern". Most combined underglaze blue with overglaze enamel decoration, as Chinese porcelain sometimes does. Another group

1475-462: The few pieces with paintings of local scenes around the town. A flask with a ship-building scene on Lowestoft beach fetched £24,000 in 2010, and in 2011 another piece with local scenes made the record price at £30,000. Soft-paste porcelain Soft-paste porcelain (sometimes simply " soft paste ", or " artificial porcelain ") is a type of ceramic material in pottery , usually accepted as

1534-438: The first decade or so of the factory. The outstanding painter of the factory, active in the 1770s, is known only as the "Tulip Painter". His distinctive pieces feature "bold, powerfully painted flower sprays, featuring prominently a large tulip". Lowestoft has a higher proportion than most factories of "documentary" pieces bearing dates, names of owners, or other inscriptions, for "farmers' celebrations, elections, weddings, and

1593-430: The first half of the 18th century, that are less translucent than most Chinese porcelain and have a rather milky-white glaze, which is prone to crackling . Some regard it as essentially made from a hard-paste body that did not reach a sufficiently high firing temperature, or uses a different glaze formula. It takes underglaze cobalt blue painting especially well, which is one of the factors leading it to be identified as

1652-428: The frit based compositions and 1200 to 1250 °C for those using feldspars or nepheline syenites as the primary flux . The lower firing temperature gives artists and manufacturers some benefits, including a wider palette of colours for decoration and reduced fuel consumption. The body of soft-paste is more granular than hard-paste porcelain, less glass being formed in the firing process. A consistent problem

1711-421: The kiln at high temperatures, they were difficult and uneconomic to use. Later formulations used kaolin (china clay), quartz, feldspars, nepheline syenite and other feldspathic rocks. Soft-paste porcelain with these ingredients was technically superior to the traditional soft-paste and these formulations remain in production. Soft-paste formulations containing little clay are not very plastic and shaping it on

1770-477: The last factories making soft-paste. There were early attempts by European potters to replicate Chinese porcelain when its composition was little understood and its constituents were not widely available in the West. The earliest formulations were mixtures of clay and ground-up glass ( frit ). Soapstone (steatite) and lime are also known to have been included in some compositions. The first successful attempt

1829-489: The like". More than 200 dated pieces are known. There is a class of "birthday plaques", with a name and date. The words A Trifle from Lowestoft (or other places in East Anglia ), are painted on small items. These evidently functioned as souvenirs in these early days of tourism in England. Lowestoft was becoming a seaside resort, and two visitors have left accounts showing that the well-off were encouraged to see over

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1888-499: The local East Anglian market, by 1770 it had a warehouse, effectively a shop, in Cheapside , London. During the early period wares decorated with Chinese-inspired scenes in underglaze blue were produced. This type of decoration continued to form the majority of production throughout the life of the factory but scenes were gradually simplified. Overglaze colours in enamel were used from about 1768, generally in white and blue or in

1947-502: The look and feel of the material can be highly attractive, and it can take painted decoration very well. The ingredients varied considerably, but always included clay , often ball clay , and often ground glass, bone ash , soapstone (steatite), flint , and quartz . They rarely included the key ingredients necessary for hard-paste, china clay including kaolin , or the English china stone , although some manufacturers included one or other of these, but failed to get their kilns up to

2006-778: The marks of Meissen or Worcester; the excavation of "wasters" at the kiln site with these has put the matter beyond doubt. Lowestoft porcelain is part of the permanent collections at many institutions, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the museum in Nicholas Everett Park, Oulton Broad , at the Castle Museum , Norwich , the Fitzwilliam Museum , Cambridge, the British Museum ,

2065-477: The past, some sources dealing with modern industrial chemistry and pottery production have made a completely different distinction between "hard porcelain" and "soft porcelain", by which all forms of pottery porcelain, including East Asian wares, are "soft porcelain". Chinese porcelain , which arrived in Europe before the 14th century, was much admired and expensive to purchase. Attempts were made to imitate it from

2124-404: The porcelain is not the highest, especially after 1770, but even the less polished pieces have "the appealling simplicity of folk art", and the high proportion of commemorative pieces, inscribed for people, places or occasions, add to their interest. Many such documentary pieces are dated which, together with the wasters excavated at the site in 1902 and 1967, has helped to build up a good picture of

2183-415: The potter's wheel is difficult. Pastes with more clay (now more commonly referred to as "bodies"), such as electrical porcelain, are extremely plastic and can be shaped by methods such as jolleying and turning. The feldspathic formulations are, however, more resilient and suffer less pyroplastic deformation. Soft-paste is fired at lower temperatures than hard-paste porcelain, typically around 1100 °C for

2242-630: The present day. Recipes were closely guarded, as illustrated by the story of Robert Brown, a founding partner in the Lowestoft porcelain factory, who is said to have hidden in a barrel in Bow to observe the mixing of their porcelain. A partner in Longton Hall referred to "the Art, Secret or Mystery" of porcelain. In the fifteen years after Briand's demonstration, several factories were founded in England to make soft-paste table-wares and figures: Unlike

2301-548: The rear, as explained below. The American China Manufactory (or Bonnin and Morris) in Philadelphia , America's first successful porcelain factory, also made soft-paste from about 1770–1772. Experiments at the Rouen manufactory produced the earliest soft-paste in France, when a 1673 patent was granted to Louis Poterat, but it seems that not much was made. An application for the renewal of the patent in 1694 stated, "the secret

2360-476: The same materials which is let down to the surface of the water, so that the bather descending from the machine by a few steps is concealed from the public view, whereby the most refined female is enabled to enjoy the advantages of the sea with the strictest delicacy. People entered the small room of the machine while it was on the beach, wearing their street clothing. In the machine they changed into their bathing suit, although men were allowed to bathe nude until

2419-451: The sea or need to be turned around. It was considered essential that the machine blocked any view of the bather from the shore. Some machines were equipped with a canvas tent lowered from the seaside door, sometimes capable of being lowered to the water, giving the bather greater privacy. Some resorts employed a dipper , a strong person of the same sex who would assist the bather in and out of the sea. Some dippers were said to push bathers into

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2478-490: The secret and switched. France did in fact make hard-paste at Strasbourg in 1752–1754, until Louis XV gave his own factory, Vincennes , a monopoly, at which point the factory moved to become the Frankenthal operation. Early factories in France, England, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland and other countries made soft-paste, the switch to hard-paste generally coming after 1750, with France and England rather in

2537-522: The son of the younger Robert Browne, recalling his father's view, explains the closure: "they could not produce the wares so cheaply as the Staffordshire potters, and that they were getting old and wished to retire from the business, not from want of capital, as they were all wealthy men for the period...". Lowestoft has no factory mark of its own, though the inscribed documentary pieces and "trifles" can be useful for identification. Some pieces used

2596-481: The surf by a horse, or a pair of horses, with a driver. Less common were machines pushed in and out of the water by human power. Some resorts had wooden rails into the water for the wheels to roll on, and a few had bathing machines pulled in and out of the sea using cables propelled by a steam engine. Once in the water, the occupants disembarked from the sea side down steps into the water. Many machines had doors front and back; those with only one door would be backed into

2655-454: The wares using a mineral ingredient called huashi , mentioned by Father François Xavier d'Entrecolles in his published letters describing Chinese production. It used to be thought that the special ingredient was soapstone (aka "French chalk", a form of steatite ; cf. Chinese : 滑石 ; pinyin : huáshí , " talc "), as used in some English porcelain. However, chemical analysis of samples shows no sign of this. Hard-paste porcelain

2714-595: The water because, at the time, bathing costumes were not yet common and most people bathed nude. "Mr. Benjamin Beale, a Quaker, was the inventor of the Bath Machine. Their structure is simple, but quite convenient; and by means of the umbrella, the pleasures of bathing may be enjoyed in so private a manner, as to be consistent with the strictest delicacy." In the Scarborough Public Library, there

2773-466: The water, then yank them out, considered part of the experience. Bathing machines would often be equipped with a small flag which could be raised by the bather as a signal to the driver that they were ready to return to shore. According to some sources, the bathing machine was developed in 1750 in Margate , Kent. That version was probably intended to conceal the user until they were mostly submerged in

2832-507: The water. The interior had a changing room and a plumbed-in WC ". Bathing machines remained in active use on English beaches until the 1890s, when they began to be parked on the beach. Legal segregation of bathing areas in Britain ended in 1901, and the use of bathing machines declined rapidly. They were then used as stationary changing rooms for a number of years. Most of them had disappeared in

2891-547: The wet state, or because it tends to slump in the kiln under high temperature, or because the body and the glaze can be easily scratched. (Scratching with a file is a crude way of finding out whether a piece is made of soft-paste or not.) The first soft-paste in England was demonstrated by Thomas Briand to the Royal Society in 1742 and is believed to have been based on the Saint-Cloud formula. In 1749, Thomas Frye ,

2950-502: Was Medici porcelain , produced between 1575 and 1587. It was composed of white clay containing powdered feldspar , calcium phosphate and wollastonite ( CaSiO 3 ), with quartz . Other early European soft-paste porcelain, also a frit porcelain, was produced at the Rouen manufactory in 1673, which was known for this reason as "Porcelaine française". Again, these were developed in an effort to imitate high-valued Chinese hard-paste porcelain. As these early formulations slumped in

3009-618: Was a tendency to shatter with the temperature shock of having hot or boiling water poured into a vessel that had not first been warmed up. To this day, English tea customs dictate warming the teapot with a little water before the tea is added and the main flow of water. Putting the milk into a teacup before the tea is also a common habit; both these go back to 18th-century soft-paste. After a number of complaints of not just teapots but even tureens breaking in this way, in 1790 William Duesbury II , owner of Royal Crown Derby , had to issue instructions to his customers on how to prevent this, by pouring

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3068-579: Was developed at Vincennes, whiter and freer of imperfections than any of its French rivals, which put Vincennes/Sèvres porcelain in the leading position in France and throughout the whole of Europe in the second half of the 18th century. The use of frit in this paste lent it the names " Frittenporzellan " in Germany and " frita " in Spain. In France it was known as " pâte tendre " and in England "soft-paste", perhaps because it does not easily retain its shape in

3127-497: Was isolated from other porcelain factories, or indeed makers of fine earthenware, which probably accounts for a relatively slow-moving stylistic development. It was also relatively small, with a maximum workforce of about 70. Nonetheless, it survived longer than the average English factory, perhaps because it had less competition in the local market. The factory produced experimental wares in about 1756 and first advertised their porcelain in 1760. Although Lowestoft probably sold mainly to

3186-521: Was succeeded as manager by his son of the same name, who introduced, or increased the amount of, polychrome overglaze enamelling. Although traditional sources date the end of the factory to 1802 or 1803, Geoffrey Godden concluded that the factory had ceased production by 1800, after some key employees are recorded working at Worcester porcelain . He believed production had been running down from about 1795, as competition from Staffordshire pottery , both in fine earthenware and bone china , grew. A letter from

3245-473: Was successfully produced at Meissen in 1708 by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus , though Johann Friedrich Böttger who continued his work has often been credited with the discovery of this recipe. As the recipe was kept secret, experiments continued elsewhere, mixing glass materials (fused and ground into a frit) with clay or other substances to give whiteness and a degree of plasticity. Plymouth porcelain , founded in 1748, which moved to Bristol soon after,

3304-406: Was suddenly poured into them. The German Meissen porcelain had developed hard-paste porcelain by 1708, and later German factories usually managed to find the secret out from former Meissen employees, as did Austrian Vienna porcelain in 1718. The other European countries had much longer to wait, but most factories eventually switched from soft to hard-paste, having discovered both the secret and

3363-810: Was the first English factory to make hard-paste. Bathing-machine The use of bathing machines was part of the etiquette for sea-bathing to be observed by both men and women who wished to behave respectably. Especially in Britain, even with the use of the machine to protect modesty, bathing for men and women was usually segregated, so that people of the opposite sex would not see each other in their bathing suits which, although extremely modest by modern standards, were not considered proper clothing in which to be seen in public. The bathing machines in use in Margate , Kent, were described by Walley Chamberlain Oulton in 1805 as: [F]our-wheeled carriages, covered with canvas, and having at one end of them an umbrella of

3422-405: Was the most senior. Walker seems to have had (by 1760) kilns making tiles and earthenware, and Browne may have been a chemist. Two other partners, Obed Aldred and John Richman (d. 1771) were probably "non-executives", who provided capital. Apprentices were being taken on by June 1760, indentured to Browne. By 1770 the company name was "Robert Browne and Company". When Robert Browne died in 1771 he

3481-534: Was very little used, the petitioners devoting themselves rather to faience-making". Rouen porcelain, which is blue painted, is rare and difficult to identify. The first important French porcelain was made at the Saint-Cloud factory , which was an established maker of faience . In 1702, letters-patent were granted to the family of Pierre Chicaneau, who were said to have improved upon the process discovered by him, and since 1693 to have made porcelain as "perfect as

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