Pinxton Porcelain was a porcelain works created by John Coke and William Billingsley in Pinxton in Derbyshire, England.
Pinxton Porcelain was a porcelain works created by John Coke and William Billingsley in Pinxton in Derbyshire, England.
Pinxton Porcelain was founded on land at the head of the Cromford Canal, rented from the Reverend D'Ewes Coke's third son who went into business with the businessman and porcelain painter William Billingsley. Billingsley who had been trained at the Derby works is now renowned for the quality of his porcelain painting particularly his flower painting but he was also interested in perfecting a porcelain recipe which it is thought he obtained from Zachariah Boreman. [1] Billingsley eventually left Pinxton and briefly set up a decorating shop in Mansfield where he decorated imported porcelain and pottery including some Pinxton porcelain. John Coke continued the business from 1799 to 1806, even taking in Henry Banks as a partner from 1801 to 1802. After John Coke married in 1806, John Cutts carried on until finally closing the factory in 1813.
Coke married Susanna Wilmot in April 1806 and although the porcelain business continued under John Cutts who had been decorating manager until 1813, Coke's interest moved to his coal mining business in Pinxton and he moved his family home to Debdale Hall.
There is continued interest in Pinxton Porcelain and a group was formed in 1996 of people interested in this factory and its wares. The society has published a number of publications and organised exhibitions. [2] The cabaret teapot illustrated was made at the Pinxton Porcelain factory and shows Brookhill Hall which was a home of John Coke. This cabaret teapot is part of the collection of Pinxton porcelain at Derby Museum, England. [3] The standard reference books on the products of the Pinxton china factory are Pinxton Porcelain 1795–1813 and the Porcelain of Mansfield and Brampton-in-Torksey by C Barry Sheppard and The patterns and shapes of the Pinxton china factory 1796 to 1813 by N.D. Gent.
Spode is an English brand of pottery and homewares produced by the company of the same name, which is based in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Spode was founded by Josiah Spode (1733–1797) in 1770, and was responsible for perfecting two extremely important techniques that were crucial to the worldwide success of the English pottery industry in the century to follow.
Canton or Cantonese porcelain is the characteristic style of ceramic ware decorated in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong and the sole legal port for export of Chinese goods to Europe. As such, it was one of the major forms of exportware produced in China in the 18th and 20th centuries.
In pottery hausmaler is a term for the artist, the style, and the pieces in hausmalerei, the process of buying pieces of pottery as plain "blanks", and then painting them in small workshops, or the homes of painters, before a final firing. In European pottery of the 17th to 19th centuries this was at certain times and places a significant part of production, and the decoration could be of very high quality. In England this was referred to as "outside decoration" and was also very important in the 18th and early 19th century, with some revival in the 20th.
The Royal Crown Derby Porcelain Company is the oldest or second oldest remaining English porcelain manufacturer, based in Derby, England. The company, particularly known for its high-quality bone china, having produced tableware and ornamental items since approximately 1750. It was known as 'Derby Porcelain' until 1773, when it became 'Crown Derby', the 'Royal' being added in 1890.
Royal Worcester is a porcelain brand based in Worcester, England. It was established in 1751 and is believed to be the oldest or second oldest remaining English porcelain brand still in existence today, although this is disputed by Royal Crown Derby, which claims 1750 as its year of establishment. Part of the Portmeirion Group since 2009, Royal Worcester remains in the luxury tableware and giftware market, although production in Worcester itself has ended.
Royal Doulton is an English ceramic and home accessories manufacturer that was founded in 1815. Operating originally in Vauxhall, London, and later moving to Lambeth, in 1882 it opened a factory in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, in the centre of English pottery. From the start, the backbone of the business was a wide range of utilitarian wares, mostly stonewares, including storage jars, tankards and the like, and later extending to drain pipes, lavatories, water filters, electrical porcelain and other technical ceramics. From 1853 to 1901, its wares were marked Doulton & Co., then from 1901, when a royal warrant was given, Royal Doulton.
Pinxton is a village and civil parish in Derbyshire on the western boundary of Nottinghamshire, England, just south of the Pinxton Interchange at Junction 28 of the M1 motorway where the A38 road meets the M1. Pinxton is part of the Bolsover District and at the 2011 Census had a population of 5,699. "Pinxton CCTV level crossing", located on the up and down Kirkby lines, is a major tourist attraction for train enthusiasts who come from all over the country to take photographs of some of the unique locomotives that pass over the crossing.
Mintons was a major company in Staffordshire pottery, "Europe's leading ceramic factory during the Victorian era", an independent business from 1793 to 1968. It was a leader in ceramic design, working in a number of different ceramic bodies, decorative techniques, and "a glorious pot-pourri of styles - Rococo shapes with Oriental motifs, Classical shapes with Medieval designs and Art Nouveau borders were among the many wonderful concoctions". As well as pottery vessels and sculptures, the firm was a leading manufacturer of tiles and other architectural ceramics, producing work for both the Houses of Parliament and United States Capitol.
Sprigging or sprigged decoration is a technique for decorating pottery with low relief shapes made separately from the main body and applied to it before firing. Usually thin press moulded shapes are applied to greenware or bisque. The resulting pottery is termed sprigged ware, and the added piece is a "sprig". The technique may also be described by terms such as "applied relief decoration", especially in non-European pottery.
William John Coffee (1774–1846) was an internationally renowned English artist and sculptor who worked in porcelain, plaster, and terra cotta. He also worked in oil paint, although this was not the medium for which he became famous. His early career was as a modeller for Duesbury at the china factory on Nottingham Road in Derby, England. The latter part of his life was spent in America.
The Cambrian Pottery was founded in 1764 by William Coles in Swansea, Glamorganshire, Wales. In 1790, John Coles, son of the founder, went into partnership with George Haynes, who introduced new business strategies based on the ideas of Josiah Wedgwood. Lewis Weston Dillwyn became a partner in 1802 and sole owner when George Haynes left the pottery in 1810. In 1811 Dillwyn took T.& J. Bevington into partnership, the company becoming known as Dillwyn & Co.
The Nantgarw China Works was a porcelain factory, later making other types of pottery, located in Nantgarw on the eastern bank of the Glamorganshire Canal, 8 miles (13 km) north of Cardiff in the River Taff valley, Glamorganshire, Wales. The factory made porcelain of very high quality, especially in the years from 1813–1814 and 1817–1820. Porcelain produced by Nantgarw was extremely white and translucent, and was given overglaze decoration of high quality, mostly in London or elsewhere rather than at the factory. The wares were expensive, and mostly distributed through the London dealers. Plates were much the most common shapes made, and the decoration was typically of garlands of flowers in a profusion of colours, the speciality of the founder, William Billingsley. With Swansea porcelain, Nantgarw was one of the last factories to make soft-paste porcelain, when English factories had switched to bone china, and continental and Asian ones continued to make hard-paste porcelain.
William Billingsley (1758–1828) was an influential painter of porcelain in several English porcelain factories, who also developed his own recipe for soft-paste porcelain, which produced beautiful results but a very high rate of failure in firing. He is a leading name associated with the English Romantic style of paintings of groups of flowers on porcelain that is sometimes called "naturalistic" by older sources, although that may not seem its main characteristic today.
Thomas Pardoe was a British enameler noted for flower painting.
William Duesbury (1725–1786) was an English enameller, in the sense of a painter of porcelain, who became an important porcelain entrepreneur, founder of the Royal Crown Derby and owner of porcelain factories at Bow, Chelsea, Derby and Longton Hall.
D'Ewes Coke was rector of Pinxton and South Normanton in Derbyshire, a colliery owner and philanthropist.
Coalport, Shropshire, England was a centre of porcelain and pottery production between about 1795 and 1926, with the Coalport porcelain brand continuing to be used up to the present. The opening in 1792 of the Coalport Canal, which joins the River Severn at Coalport, had increased the attractiveness of the site, and from 1800 until a merger in 1814 there were two factories operating, one on each side of the canal, making rather similar wares which are now often difficult to tell apart.
China painting, or porcelain painting, is the decoration of glazed porcelain objects such as plates, bowls, vases or statues. The body of the object may be hard-paste porcelain, developed in China in the 7th or 8th century, or soft-paste porcelain, developed in 18th-century Europe. The broader term ceramic painting includes painted decoration on lead-glazed earthenware such as creamware or tin-glazed pottery such as maiolica or faience.
The Lowestoft Porcelain Factory was a soft-paste porcelain factory on Crown Street in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England, which was active from 1757 to 1802. It mostly produced "useful wares" such as pots, teapots, and jugs, with shapes copied from silverwork or from Bow and Worcester porcelain. The factory, built on the site of an existing pottery or brick kiln, was later used as a brewery and malt kiln. Most of its remaining buildings were demolished in 1955.
The Turner family of potters was active in Staffordshire, England 1756-1829. Their manufactures have been compared favourably with, and sometimes confused with, those of Josiah Wedgwood and Sons. Josiah Wedgwood was both a friend and a commercial rival of John Turner the elder, the first notable potter in the family.
The standard reference book on the products of the Pinxton Porcelain factory is The patterns and shapes of the Pinxton China factory 1796 to 1813 by N.D.Gent published in 1996