III
BOW
Table of Contents BOW VASE, WITH COVER.
(Finely decorated in colours.)
BOW INKSTAND (DIAMETER 4 IN.).
"Made at New Canton, 1751."
At the Victoria and Albert Museum.
III
THE BOW CHINA FACTORY
In this "Chat" we shall treat of the wonderful porcelain made at Bow, or "New Canton," as the makers called their factory on the banks of the Lea. It was established about 1730, and it ceased about 1776. That is to say, it commenced with the reign of George II. and continued for a short time during the reign of George III. Pope was not dead, Fielding was writing his novels, Burke was electrifying the country with his genius, the great Doctor Johnson was in the midst of his Dictionary, David Garrick was holding the town in a spell by his art, and Sir Joshua Reynolds was, with his brush, perpetuating the beauties of his day, while Burns and Scott, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and Byron, Thackeray, and Dickens were then in the unborn future.
BOW FIGURE (6 IN. HIGH).
Woman playing pastorella.
At the Victoria and Albert Museum.
So this porcelain of Bow comes to us direct from the eighteenth century. We have been taught to regard the eighteenth century as a period of lace-ruffles and wigs, of powder and of patches, of dull, insipid ladies, of hard-drinking squires, of rough soldiers-a century with little or no love of art, when Shakespeare had been almost forgotten. Of its china, certainly, we call up only a picture of ugly grinning monsters, and little meaningless gee-gaws-snuff-boxes and patch-boxes, and china handles for walking-sticks; but a glance at what Bow produced dispels so crude an idea at once, and, let us hope, for ever. Bow, in its own field, is worthy to stand by the side of what Sir Joshua has left us, and what Gainsborough bequeathed to posterity as poetic memories in paint and canvas of "dead women, loved and gone."
As in our other "Chats" on Derby and Worcester and Chelsea, so with Bow, we shall have to tell of the human lives that have gone to the making of these fragile porcelain figures, all that is left to us of dead men's life-work-which Polly or Molly or Elizabeth Ann may demolish by a fatal twist of the feather-brush. A patent was taken out by Edward Heylin, in the parish of Bow, and Thomas Frye, of the parish of West Ham, in 1744, for a new method of manufacturing "a certain mineral, equal to, if not exceeding in goodness and beauty, china or porcelain ware imported from abroad. The material is an earth, the produce of the Cherokee nation in America, called by the natives unaker." In 1749, Thomas Frye took out, alone, a second patent "for a new method of making a certain ware, which is not inferior in beauty and fineness, and is rather superior in strength, than the earthenware that is brought from the East Indies, and is commonly known by the name of China, Japan, or Porcelain Ware."
A word or two concerning Frye. Our Irish readers will be glad to learn that he was born at Dublin, in 1710. He came to London in 1738, when, he painted a portrait of Frederick, Prince of Wales for Saddlers' Hall. At the establishment of the Bow factory he took the management. To bring the china to perfection, he spent fifteen years of his life among furnaces, which had so bad an effect upon his health that his constitution nearly broke down. In 1759 he had to go to Wales for a change of air, and in 1760 he returned to London, and we find him taking a house at Hatton Garden, where he executed some important mezzotint engravings-which, as Mr. Rudyard Kipling observes, "is another story." He died of consumption in 1762. Perhaps Oliver Goldsmith had him in mind (who knows?) when he wrote his line-
"There the pale artist plies his sickly trade."
To ladies it will be especially interesting to read that Frye had two daughters, who assisted him in painting the china at Bow.
BOW CHINA.
Figure of Britannia with medallion of George II.
(Decorated in colours, on rococo base.)
Readers will, before now, have come to the conclusion that the study of old china is not superlatively easy, and that the question of marks is at the best a vexed one. Should there be any who have any lingering doubts on this point, they will speedily join the majority when they come to consider the bewildering marks of the Bow factory. These same marks, be it said, have puzzled experts who have denied each other's conclusions, though with hardly as much vehemence as the late Mr. Bret Harte's learned society "Upon the Stanislaus," who engaged in conflict "with the remnants of a palæozoic age" in shameful manner-
"And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin, Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in."
Bow Factory-Marks.
We give one set of the known marks of the Bow factory, later we shall give another set no less puzzling. It is difficult to attempt to offer any definite conclusions, or to do more in the space at our disposal than to state that these are marks known to have been used at Bow, and are upon specimens in the national or well-known private collections. The letter B and the drawn bow, of course, explain themselves. The crescent in blue and the sword and anchor in red occur together on a china figure of a sportsman with a gun. It is conjectured that the introduction of a dagger may have been due to the fact that both proprietors were freemen of the City of London, and the dagger, as is well known, is part of the City arms. The triple mark of the anchor with the vertical and horizontal daggers, by some collectors is ascribed to early Chelsea, by others to Worcester; it is a disputed point.
BOW FACTORY MARKS.
The little figure we reproduce (on p. 50) is of a woman playing the pastorella. It is one of a pair of figures. The other represents a man singing. Each figure is marked in red with both anchor and dagger. The pastorella represented in the figure was a musical instrument in general use previously to the introduction of the spinet. It may be remarked that at the back of each of these figures, near the base, a square hole has been pierced before glazing, for the purpose of receiving a metal stem supporting nozzles for candles. As this square hole is said never to be found on similar Chelsea pieces, it has come to be regarded as a distinctive feature of old Bow figures.
PAIR OF BOW FIGURES.
Musical Subjects.
Man with flageolet and drum, Woman with triangle.
Marked with anchor in red, cross in blue.
Among the various articles made at the Bow factory may be enumerated the following, which have been taken from the account-books of the factory: Shepherds and shepherdesses, cupids, fluter, fiddler, harlequin, columbine, pierrot or clown, tambourine player, Dutch dancer, woman with chicken, birds on pedestals, swans, boars, squirrels, goats, as well as many miscellaneous articles for general use, such as salt-boxes, candlesticks, mugs, pickle-stands, &c. We reproduce an inkstand, four inches in diameter, of white glazed porcelain decorated with flowers, which decoration we call attention to as being characteristic of Bow. An inscription appears at the top: "Made at New Canton, 1751" (p. 49).
Since Chaucer's day, Stratford-le-Bow has come down to us in rhyme, for the poet playfully pokes fun at the good nun in his "Canterbury Tales":-
"And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetishly After the scole of Stratford-atte-Bow, For Frenche of Paris was to her unknowe."
But should china collectors who travel down the Great Eastern Railway wish a further fillip to remind them of Bow, sundry soap and candle factories, with stench so strong that it knocks at the railway windows, will arrest their straying thoughts. The literary reader may, when he catches glimpses of the brown and oily ooze of the River Lea, think of Coleridge's lines to Cologne and the River Rhine.
And here at Bow linger still the memories of the old factory-a century old-where Quin as Falstaff was turned out in porcelain, and Garrick posed as Richard III. in a china figure. A match factory stands on the site of the old Bow China factory, but there is still a "China Row" to suggest the old days of "New Canton" and its wares.
BOW TEAPOT.
Decorated in underglaze blue, in Chinese style. (Height 81/4 ins.)
BOW PLATE.
Decorated with oriental floral design in overglaze colour in red, green, and blue. (Diameter, 83/4 in.).
In the collection of the Author.
The discovery is interesting of fragments of old Bow porcelain, and portions of "saggers" on the site of one of the kilns while digging a drain from the match factory.
BOW WHITE CHINA CUPS HAVING RAISED MAYFLOWER PATTERN AFTER CHINESE DESIGNS.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
The children of the neighbourhood were observed to have as playthings bits of broken china of a high-class and delicate ware, never emanating from the china shops of Bow, and Mr. Higgins, attached to the match factory, henceforth kept strict watch over the excavations, and careful examination unearthed a number of broken...
