“…The material is an earth, the produce of the Chirokee nation in America, called by the natives unaker.”
Thomas Frye and Edward Heylyn’s patent of 6th December 1744
The finely slip-cast high-fired body with 20 convex flutes and everted rim is supported on a decagonal footrim with attached scroll handle with thumb piece. The brilliant white translucency is unlike any other English porcelain.
This rare group of porcelains, consisting of around forty known pieces, has long intrigued ceramic scholars. The hardness of the body once led some to suggest a continental origin but a paper by R.J. Charleston and J.V.G. Mallet in 1971, ‘A problematical group of 18th century porcelains’, concluded that it was British. A scientific study published by Ian Freestone of the British Museum in 1996 identified the use of a primary kaolinic clay and suggested the connection with the patent taken out on 6th December 1744 by Thomas Frye and Edward Heylyn. This patent, sometimes referred to as ‘The first Bow patent’, specified the use of a clay “an earth, the produce of the Chirokee nation in America, called by the natives unaker”.
A further paper by W.R.H. Ramsay, A. Gabszewicz and E.G. Ramsay in 2001 and another in 2003, ‘The chemistry of ‘A’-marked porcelain and its relation to the Heylyn and Frye patent of 1744’, established this connection scientifically and showed that it was a high fired hard-paste porcelain which precisely replicated the 1744 patent. Ramsay confirmed this by firing samples from clay from the Iotla mines near Franklin in south-west North Carolina, which proved to be extremely close to ‘A’-marked porcelains.
Frye was a talented artist and Heylyn a merchant with shipping interests to the American colonies, but neither had previous experience of making porcelain, let alone a true hard-paste. They must have acquired the materials and technological skills from someone else. This might have been the Savannah stoneware potter Andrew Duché who claimed to have found the materials required to make hard-paste or ‘true’ porcelain as early as 1737 in western North Carolina and we have tantalising records of his early trials. General Oglethorpe the founder of the Georgia colony wrote to the Trustees in London in October 1738 “an earth is found which Duché the potter has baked into Chinaware”. The local secretary Colonel Stevens wrote in 1741 that Duché had succeeded in making porcelain and “I saw a little piece, in form a tea-cup,..which had passed through one baking, and was yet rough; but upon holding it to the light… I thought it as transparent as our ordinary China cups commonly are”.
We know that Duché came to England on 26 May 1743 and the Registers of the Inspector-General of Imports and Exports, covering the period 1st January to 25th March 1743/44, record the importation of 20 cwt of clay from Carolina to the Port of London.
Condition:
Two chips and a further minute chip to rim and one within foot rim
Provenance:
Anon. sale Sotheby’s 27.4.1976, lot 165
Liane Richards
Anton Gabszewicz Collection no. 862
Literature:
Charleston and Mallet 1971
R.J. Charleston, & J.V. G. Mallet, (1971), ‘A problematical group of 18th century porcelains’, Transactions English Ceramic Circle, vol. 8, part 1, p. 119, no. 25
Mallet 1994
J. V. G. Mallet, ‘The ‘A’-Marked Porcelains Revisited’, Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle, vol. 15 part 2, p. 257, Appendix: Addenda and Corrigenda to the list of Pieces Recorded in vol. 8, part 1, pp. 118.19, no. 25
Freestone 1996
Ian Freestone, ‘A’-marked Porcelain: Some recent Scientific Work’, Transactions English Ceramic Circle, vol. 16, part 1, pp. 76-84
Ramsay, Gabszewicz and Ramsay 2001
W. R. H. Ramsay, A, Gabszewicz, & E. G. Ramsay, ‘Unaker or Cherokee clay and its relationship to the ‘Bow’ porcelain manufactory’, Transactions English Ceramic Circle, vol.17, part 3, pp. 474-499
Ramsay, Gabszewicz and Ramsay 2003
W. R. H., Ramsay, A. Gabszewicz, & E. G. Ramsay, ‘The chemistry of ‘A’-marked porcelain and its relation to the Heylyn and Frye patent of 1744’, Transactions English Ceramic Circle, vol. 18, part 2, pp. 264-283
Ramsay and Ramsay 2017
Dr W. Ross H. Ramsay & E. Gael Ramsay, ‘The Evolution and Compositional Development of English Porcelains from the 16th C to Lund’s Bristol c. 1750 and Worcester c. 1752 – the Golden Chain’, (Invercargill, New Zealand, July 2017)
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