Liverpool porcelain

Richard Chaffers made soapstone-type porcelain featuring mainly Oriental designs at Shaw's Brow. An advertisement for it in 1756 provides the earliest documentation of Liverpool porcelain production, which he continued until his death in 1765. In 1756 he also held a license to mine soapstone at a site in Cornwall.[1] The porcelain resembles Worcester porcelain. Most of the plates made by the factory are octagonal, and some tea and coffee sets are six-sided. A common product was a bulbous mug with an incised cordon above the foot, enamelled with a Chinese scene in polychrome. Philip Christian & Co took over the factory when Richard Chaffers died and produced similar designs until 1778.

Next door to Chaffers, Samuel Gilbody took over his father's earthenware business and switched to the production of enamelled porcelain at his "China Manufactory" on Shaw's Brow, Liverpool, from about 1755 until his bankruptcy in 1760. His factory is probably one of two shown on a 1769 map of Liverpool.

Cup, 1756-1761, William Reid and Co of Brownlow Hill, Liverpool.

The third manufacturer was William Reid of Brownlow Hill. On 12 November 1756 his first advert for porcelain produced in Liverpool appeared in the Liverpool Advertiser. He used an underglaze blue Oriental designs on an almost opaque body. It read:

'Liverpool China Manufactory of Messrs Reid and Co, proprietors of the China Manufactory, have opened their warehouse in Castle Street and sell all kinds of blue and white china ware, not inferior to any made in England, both wholesale and retail'.

Transfer-printed plate from the James Pennington factory.

The company went bankrupt in June 1761 but the business continued under William Ball, before it was sold in July 1763 to Thomas Lewis, and was then leased to James Pennington and Co. The Pennington family, James, John and Seth continued to produce porcelain on the site until around 1767/1768 when they moved the factory to Park Lane until 1773. John Pennington also had two porcelain Factories: Copperas Hill c. 1770–79 and Folly Lane 1779–86 which was continued by his widow Jane until 1794.

William Ball used a soapstone porcelain with a glossy glaze to give a shiny ('sticky') appearance, as did the Penningtons, to his Chinese patterns with a blue under-glaze.

For a short time, at the close of the eighteenth century (1790–95), the partnership of Thomas Wolfe with Mason & Lucock made hybrid-hard-paste porcelain of a type first produced at New Hall in Staffordshire, at the Islington China Works. [2]

The Herculaneum factory was established in 1796 by Samuel Worthington at first producing some earthenware and stoneware with workers from Staffordshire but produced some porcelain, mainly tea-ware around 1800.

• 
  Plate, c. 1765, Liverpool (or London)
• 
  Vase, c. 1770
• 
  Vase by John and Jane Pennington, late 18th-century
• 
  Commemorative "ship bowl" for punch, a common Liverpool form. John and Jane Pennington, late 18th-century
• 
  Samuel Gilbody, 1758-60