Lowestoft Porcelain Factory

decoration, c. 1760 Many pieces are in a pattern, itself derived from Chinese models, known as "Redgrave" (after a family with several workers at the factory), with paeonies and rocks. This exists in several types, some with their own names such as "House pattern" and "Two-Bird pattern". Most combined underglaze blue with overglaze enamel decoration, as Chinese porcelain sometimes does. Another group is called "Hughes-type", after James Hughes, a modeller. Most of the surface has moulded low relief with small and rather vague plant shapes, leaves and garlands. Areas left with a flat surface are painted in underglaze blue in a Chinese style, typically a circular or oval space in the centre of the sides, where landscape scenes are painted, and borders at top and perhaps bottom, painted with floral or geometric motifs. These are mostly dated to the first decade or so of the factory. The outstanding painter of the factory, active in the 1770s, is known only as the "Tulip Painter". His distinctive pieces feature "bold, powerfully painted flower sprays, featuring prominently a large tulip". There is a class of "birthday plaques", with a name and date. In 1777 a Thomas Wale and friends "saw the china ware fabrick, etc, and all of us bought some of it. Saw ye hanging gardens, and ye fine prospect of ye sea. Excellent bathing-machines, etc. ....". ==So-called "Oriental Lowestoft"==

A persistent "notorious mistake" in several editions of a standard book by the Victorian expert William Chaffers allocated to Lowestoft types of Chinese export porcelain that had been produced in large quantities (far more than the small Lowestoft factory could have made). There were in fact some Chinese imitations (in hard-paste porcelain) of Lowestoft porcelain shipped out to China by the British East India Company. It is also possible that some Chinese "blanks" were given overglaze decoration in Lowestoft. A Robert Allen, first a painter at the factory and later the manager from c. 1780, also had his own workshop in the town where he decorated pieces "in the white" from elsewhere. or "Oriental Lowestoft" in the United States. ==Business history==

taste, c. 1768–1770 The start of the factory is somewhat unclear. Robert Browne (d. 1771) was the manager, with other partners, of which Philip Walker (d. 1803) was the most senior. Walker seems to have had (by 1760) kilns making tiles and earthenware, and Browne may have been a chemist. Two other partners, Obed Aldred and John Richman (d. 1771) were probably "non-executives", who provided capital. Apprentices were being taken on by June 1760, indentured to Browne. By 1770 the company name was "Robert Browne and Company". ==Marks and collections==

Lowestoft has no factory mark of its own, though the inscribed documentary pieces and "trifles" can be useful for identification. Some pieces used the marks of Meissen or Worcester; the excavation of "wasters" at the kiln site with these has put the matter beyond doubt. Lowestoft porcelain is part of the permanent collections at many institutions, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Lowestoft Museum, Oulton Broad, at the Castle Museum, Norwich, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the British Museum, the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Harvard Art Museums, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Clark Art Institute, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Although small ordinary pieces can still be relatively cheap (from £100 up), the highest prices are fetched by the few pieces with paintings of local scenes around the town. A flask with a shipbuilding scene on Lowestoft beach fetched £24,000 in 2010, and in 2011 another piece with local scenes made the record price at £30,000. File:Teapot, attributed to Lowestoft Porcelain Factory, Lowestoft, England, c. 1765, soft-paste porcelain - Brooklyn Museum - DSC09116.JPG|Teapot, attributed to Lowestoft, c. 1765 File:VA23Oct10 148.jpg|Jug showing a game of cricket, 1769–1770 File:Tea bowl (AM 1962.44-2).jpg|Tea bowl, c. 1770, Redgrave type, combining underglaze blue with overglaze decoration, and touches of gilding File:Tea bowl (AM 1962.44-3) (cropped).jpg|Another bowl from the set File:Sugar bowl (?) (part of a service) MET 188204.jpg|Sugar bowl from a service in Chinese style File:Cream pitcher (part of a service) MET 188203.jpg|Jug from the same service File:Jug (AM 1968.70-1).jpg|Jug File:Child MET 149260.jpg|Figure of a putto or child ==Notes==