Museum number
2019.232
Object
Plate, Bow Porcelain Factory, soft-paste porcelain, c.1770
Description
the centre with an underglaze-blue eight-pointed star enriched in gilding surrounded by two branches in different tones of green, on which perch two birds with predominantly yellow, orange and pink plumage and with scattered butterflies and a yellow insect, within a flattened lobed rim, anchor and dagger marin in iron-red. 7 3/4 in diam.
Materials
soft-paste porcelain
On display?
No

Further description

Simple name
plate
Dimensions
1cm (h) x 19cm (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