Museum number
2019.335
Object
Blue-ground plate, Bow Porcelain Factory, soft-paste porcelain, c.1770
Description
the centres painted with exotic birds strutting and perched among shrubs in tones of blue, pink and yellow, the washed underglaze-blue borders enriched with gilt line rims, the undersides with gilt foliage covering imperfections in the body, iron-red anchor and dagger marks. 8 in diam.
Materials
soft-paste porcelain
On display?
No

Further description

Simple name
plate
Dimensions
1.5cm (h)
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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