Museum number
2019.254
Object
Figure of a lady musician, Bow Porcelain Factory, soft-paste porcelain, c.1758
Description
playing the lyre, in a pale-yellow hat, turquoise bodice and white skirt, painted with trailing garden flowers and black shoes, seated on rockwork, on a scroll-moulded base enriched in puce with three applied flowers. 8 in high.
Materials
soft-paste porcelain
On display?
No

Further description

Simple name
figurine/sculptural group
Dimensions
19.5cm (h) x 11.4cm (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.

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