Museum number
2019.53
Object
Baluster mug, Bow Porcelain Factory, soft-paste porcelain, c.1754
Description
with grooved loop handle painted in a bright blue with a figure crossing a bridge from one island with a willow tree on pierced rockwork to another with a figure in a sentry box, two further figures in the distance beneath a diaper-pattern rim reserved with half-flowerheads, the interior inscribed '3 Poice' with semi-circular mark above, mock Oriental marks and painter's mark H beneath the handle. 3 1/2 in high.
Materials
soft-paste porcelain
On display?
No

Further description

Simple name
ceramics
Dimensions
8cm (h) x 10cm (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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