Museum number
2019.189
Object
Octagonal plate, Bow Porcelain Factory, soft-paste porcelain, c.1760
Description
boldly painted with an Oriental seated beneath a pine tree, wearing a black hat and puce and blue robes beside a fence and a yellow-topped, blue-edged table with iron-red legs, a butterfly in flight above, the border with grey-green grasses and trailing foliage, within a chocolate line rim, the reverse with a grey-green leaf to the rim. 8 3/4 in diam.
Materials
soft-paste porcelain
On display?
No

Further description

Simple name
plate
Dimensions
1.1cm (h) x 22.3cm (w)
Founded in the mid-1740s, the Bow factory, located in Bow, now East London, was the first English manufacturer to make porcelain on a commercial scale. Bow porcelain was largely aimed at the middle-classes. Famous for its imitations of imported Chinese and Japanese porcelain, the factory also produced some of the earliest full-length figures in English porcelain. From the 1760s the quality declined and the factory closed around 1774. The factory’s legacy lives on as its use of bone ash in the manufacture of porcelain evolved into what we know as English bone china.

Please help us improve our records. Let us know if there are any errors by writing to curators@holburne.org