While the earliest known piece of English china, bearing the date 1745, belongs to Chelsea, the other great London factory, Bow, has the honour of the earliest documentary record of the manufacture in this country. This priority, by one year only, based on a patent applied for in 1744, entitles the Bow works to be noticed first.
Except in the direction of figures, the productions of Bow were of an unambitious character. “Useful” wares showing many varied types of decoration were made during the thirty odd years of the factory’s existence. The earlier of these were interpretations, not as a rule slavish copies, of the Chinese _famille rose_ and of the works of the Japanese potter, Kakiyemon; their colours are often harmonious, and their gilding of peculiar richness. Such praise cannot be bestowed on the later productions, which have too often a garish and clumsy air; the charm of simplicity is sacrificed in the effort to be splendid, and the results are crude and ungainly. It is interesting to note some pieces with landscapes so closely resembling the type which is commonly found on the German porcelain made at Fulda as to point to the suggestion that they must have been derived from that source.
Some of the figures made at Bow show considerable spirit and breadth of modelling, which is best appreciated when the china has been left white, without the addition of coloured enamels. The statuettes of the actors Woodward and Kitty Clive in character, King Lear, and some dignified figures of nuns, are almost as effective as the white figures of Nymphenburg, of which mention has already been made. These white pieces date mostly from the earlier stages of the works. At a later time the clever modelling is usually obscured by enamelling of unpleasing tones. A great number of the later figures are copied directly from the Meissen models of Kändler. Instances in the Schreiber Collection at Kensington are a spirited pair of prancing horses held in respectively by a Turk and a negro, Augustus the Strong of Saxony kissing his hand to a lady, and a pair of tureens in the form of partridges on their nests.
Perhaps the most pretentious figures ever made at Bow were the pair of General Wolfe and the Marquis of Granby, of which there is an example in the same collection. These were modelled by Tebo, who is also mentioned as having worked at Worcester and Bristol. The name has a curiously unfamiliar form, and is probably an English phonetic spelling of the French Thibaut. It is by no means improbable that he was one of the many French potters who migrated to this country in search of fortune, or to escape the tyrannical pretensions of the French royal manufacture. The pair of figures was doubtless made in 1760, to commemorate the events of the previous year, so glorious in the annals of British warfare. In the victories of Quebec and Minden, Wolfe had met his death and Lord Granby had won his first distinction by saving the British cavalry from disgrace. These two soldiers were the popular heroes of the day, and their figures in porcelain would be sure to command a ready sale. The portrait of Wolfe is copied from a sketch by Captain Smith, which was engraved by Richard Houston. Granby appears to be taken from a print by the same engraver after a painting by Reynolds, which was published in 1760; he is represented in the uniform of Colonel of the Horse Guards.